The View from Right Field

@BernieSanders’s “Green New Deal”. Is He Trying to Re-elect @realDonaldTrump?

Senator Bernie Sanders was an early supporter of the Green New Deal, and last week he issued his version of what that would mean.  Let’s just say his plan is big.  It would require lots of government and lots of money, though as to the latter, his plan says it’s all paid for with taxes on big energy, reduced military spending (because we can “scal[e] back military spending on maintaining global oil dependence”), taxes paid by all the people with new, good-paying jobs, and, of course, the rich “pay[ing] their fair share.”

Most of the news articles did not go into the details of Senator Sanders’ plan, though “Vox” did include some of them.  Perhaps the most comprehensive list was in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial this morning.  (Not surprisingly, the WSJ’s editorial page is not supportive.)  On the other hand, if you really want to see what’s in the plan, just go to berniesanders.com.  It’s there.

The Purpose of a Corporation. I’ll Go with Milton Friedman.

Last Monday, the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers of big U.S. corporations, announced that it had changed its statement on the purpose of a corporation and had issued a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.”¹  This was a big deal:

“The leaders of some of America’s biggest companies are chipping away at the long-held notion that corporate decision-making should revolve around what is best for shareholders. …

No longer should decisions be based solely on whether they will yield higher profits for shareholders, the group said.  Rather, corporate leaders should take into account ‘all stakeholders’ – that is, employees, customers and society writ large. …

I Am So Tired of @realDonaldTrump

In the middle of his snit yesterday over trade and tariffs with China, President Trump tweeted, in part:

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” (Here and here)

I just don’t know what to say.  Maybe Xi Jinping and Kim Jung Un, people President Trump calls his friends, can order their companies to do this.  But, President Trump, you can’t do this.  We are a free country, and you can’t order people or companies around like some Communist dictator.  And saying things like this is stupid. 

Does Anybody in Washington Care About Ukraine?

The answer, of course, is no.  Fortunately, at least some other people do, as can be seen by French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.¹  When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, annexed Crimea, and supported (including with Russian troops) a separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine, Barack Obama pretty much did nothing.  As I mentioned in my post on Monday, President Obama threatened tough sanctions but wound up, (in the words of The Economist), imposing “underwhelming ones”.  He refused to sell defensive, anti-tank weapons to Ukraine on the theory, I guess, that you can stop fighting by not giving victims the means to defend themselves.  He said, as I also mentioned Monday, “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  (Answer: Yes.) 

Ultimately, it was German Chancellor Angela Merkel who led the effort, along with France, to try to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.²  Chancellor Merkel’s efforts led to the Minsk II agreements, but implementation of them has been limited, to say the least.  President Obama left the White House without having done anything substantive.

Foreign Policy: Are Presidents Trump and Obama All That Different?

Wilbur Ross, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce said, last Wednesday, that Hong Kong was an internal matter for Hong Kong and added: “What are we going to do – invade Hong Kong?”  In response, Edward Luce, of the Financial Times, commented: “In a few words, Mr Ross captured the degeneration of US foreign policy.”¹  Which may be true, but it didn’t start January 20, 2017.

Secretary Ross’s choice, invasion or doing nothing, sounds suspiciously like the phony choices Barack Obama used to justify his do-nothing, or at least, do-as-little-as-possible, approach to foreign policy.  For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and fomented a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, President Obama asked: “Do people actually think that somehow us sending some additional arms into Ukraine could potentially deter the Russian Army?”  In fact, the Trump administration, even though President Trump is supposedly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, has sent the kinds of defensive weapons that President Obama refused to send.  And it has seemed to help.

Confidence and Predictability. Words You Never Hear in Connection With Donald Trump

I have talked before about the importance of certainty and confidence, in both foreign affairs and the economy.  In an editorial yesterday on the possible upcoming recession (the ‘Trump recession,” the Democrats will call it), The Wall Street Journal said this:

“[W]e never said tariffs would produce immediate recession.  We said they – and the climate of uncertainty they were creating for business – would chill global trade and undermine the surge in capital investment spurred by tax reform and deregulation.  The growth momentum from tax cuts and a strong labor market were able to mask the impact of helter-skelter trade policy for a time.  But that old economic disciplinarian, Adam Smith, sooner or later exacts a price for policy blunders.

@Cubs 2019: Home Runs Are Nice, But They’re Not Enough

I don’t know if they have a statistic for what percentage of a team’s runs are scored on home runs.  If they do, the percentage for baseball as a whole is clearly going up – a lot.  And I would imagine the Cubs are a leader in that percentage.  It’s also pretty clear Joe Maddon is not happy about it.

Mark Gonzalez wrote in Wednesday’s Tribune about Joe Maddon’s thoughts on the way hitting is taught today:

“‘Just to go Twitter and search “hitting guru,”‘ Maddon said. ‘And find out all these different people making money these days. They’re making it too complicated, and it’s really sad.’

Mass Shootings: After We “Do Something,” Let’s Try to Do Something That Actually Works

With two more mass shootings, in El Paso and Dayton, we are told we must “do something.”  Generally, that means gun control, though it now also seems to include “red flag” laws, as well as more spending for mental health and doing something about violent video games. Okay, let’s do it, subject of course to the Constitution.  Not only the Second Amendment, but also the other ones: the First, Fourth, Fifth, etc.

But after we “do something,” let’s also try to do something that works.  Megan McArdle, at The Washington Post, has a couple of ideas on this subject (here and here).  Aggressive stop-and-frisk policing has seemed to reduce murder rates in places like New York City, but many people don’t like what they see as police harassment of minorities.  Also, given the distrust of the police by many people in places like Chicago, you wonder how it would work there.  Plus, these kinds of tactics wouldn’t stop mass shootings, though reducing day-to-day murders might save more lives than reducing mass shootings over a whole year.

Russia and China: Dangers and Opportunities. But Is Anybody Paying Attention?

Protests in Hong Kong have extended into their tenth week, with the airport in Hong Kong being shut down over the weekend.  Meanwhile in Moscow, and elsewhere in Russia, there are growing protests with respect to upcoming local elections and efforts by the Vladimir Putin regime to prevent opposition candidates from running in those elections. 

The protests in Russia have been met by force and large numbers of arrests.  Beijing has yet to intervene in the Hong Kong protests, but one wonders how long that restraint will last.  In both Russia and the People’s Republic of China, government-controlled media have limited dissemination about the protests, but I am sure some information is seeping around and through Putin’s barriers and the Great Fire Wall.

Once Again: Can Americans Be Trusted With Campaign Finance Disclosures?

Last Monday, U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro (Dem, Tex.) tweeted a list of 44 people in San Antonio, Texas, who contributed the maximum amount to President Trump’s campaign in 2019, with this comment:

“Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump – the owner of @BillMillerBarBQ, owner of the @HistoricPearl, realtor Phyllis Browning, etc. Their contributions are fueling campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”