The View from Right Field

The Washington 180 – Once Again

With Joe Biden being elected President and the Republicans very possibly keeping a majority in the Senate,¹ we may have another “Washington 180” coming up next year. 

After the Republicans took the House in 2010, Barack Obama couldn’t get Congress to pass his agenda.  When Congress wouldn’t pass the laws he wanted, President Obama turned to what he called his “pen and phone.”²  Sometimes, departments and agencies followed the Administrative Procedure Act and adopted formal regulations.  Other times, they just issued new interpretations of laws or prior regulations.  Or they sent so-called “Dear Colleagues” letters to state and local governments setting out new rules, with an implied threat to cut off federal funding if they didn’t follow the new rules or standards.

Brett Kavanaugh: Thoughts on a Story That May Never End

While Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court, one assumes the controversy over his nomination will go on for a long time (forever-?), so it is probably not too late for me to make a few comments.

First, there is the question of whether we must automatically “Believe Women,” as a full-page ad said in The Wall Street Journal (and probably lots of other papers).¹  With respect to this question, Megan McArdle’s column in The Washington Post on Susan Collins’s vote on now-Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation, talked about some things I hadn’t thought of before:

“Women know, in a visceral way that men never can, what it is like to live your life in consciousness of a single, inescapable fact: that virtually every man you meet is capable of physically overpowering you and taking what you won’t give them freely. We also know that if some man attacks us, it is likely to be in a private place, with no witnesses, and that the physical evidence will often be little different from the aftermath of consensual sex.

Larry Summers Drives from Chicago to Oregon and Discovers a Strange New Country: America

Lawrence Summers, former President of Harvard University (and currently a professor there), as well as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and director of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in Tuesday’s Washington Post¹ about a trip he took to a place he had apparently never been before: America.  Instead of flying over the people he helped govern in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, Dr. Summers and his wife took a two-week road trip from Chicago to Portland, Oregon.  And he found a country, and people, who were different from the economic models he helped write or from what he saw “looking down from a plane”.

Here are some excerpts from his column, with my comments in italics:

“Again and again, we encountered signs warning us to check our gas because it would be 50 miles to the next station.  [And you could get to that station about as fast as you could drive across Manhattan in rush hour.]  I’m sure there were moments when we were 250 miles from any place where I could have purchased an iPhone charger.  Often there was no cellphone service to be had, either.”  [Oh my gosh, not able to buy an iPhone charger – or get cellphone reception.  Civilization is at end.]

Here’s One Tax Break for the Rich that Democrats Really Like

When Barack Obama was president, his default position on taxes was that the “rich” should pay more.  According to President Obama, the rich needed to pay their fair share.  He never said what percentage or amount equaled their fair share, but it was always more than they were paying at the time.  And definitely more than the Republicans thought was right.  Because the Republicans are all about tax cuts for the rich.

Well, with the new tax plan Donald Trump has presented, it looks like we have finally found both (i) a group of rich people that Democrats don’t think should pay more and (ii) a tax break for the rich that Democrats want to keep.  The rich that Democrats don’t think should pay more are, of course, those who live in their states and the tax break Democrats want to keep is the deduction for state and local taxes.

You Call It Obstructionism. I Call It Standing for Principle.

Throughout the last six years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats complained about Republican “obstructionism.”  They complained that Republicans wouldn’t vote for anything President Obama proposed and that he was forced to do things on his own, via executive order, agreements as opposed to treaties with other countries, etc., because the Republicans wouldn’t work with him.

Now the situation is reversed.  A Republican (or at least somebody who isn’t a Democrat) is president, and it is the Democrats who are united in opposition to anything he (or Republicans in Congress) proposes.  But now it’s apparently not obstructionism.  Now it’s standing for principle.  Because what Donald Trump/the Republicans are proposing is really bad, and he/they won’t agree to what the Democrats consider a reasonable compromise.

Just How Welcoming is Welcoming?

The town I live in just passed a resolution declaring it was a welcoming community.  My church did the same thing.  All of which is fine.  You should welcome people.  It’s what churches are supposed to do.  And towns, too.  Welcoming people is the nice thing to do and the proper way to behave.

But I do sort of wonder how welcoming some of these groups really are.  Are they going to welcome people who support President Trump, too?  If it doesn’t matter what you do in your bedroom or where you go to the bathroom, should it matter who you support politically or who you vote for in the polling booth?

True welcoming is not about being nice to people you agree with.  It’s easy to welcome people you like.  Real welcoming is about being nice to people you disagree with.  That’s harder.

What's the Connection Between Higher Minimum Wages and 10¢ for Grocery Bags?

I don’t live in California, so it is hard to keep up with what’s happening in the People’s Republic of Berkeley.  Fortunately, however, River Forest is next door to Oak Park, Illinois, so I at least have that.

Last week, when Oak Park adopted a new ten-cent charge on single-use bags at grocery stores, etc., I was a little confused.  At the end of June, Oak Park decided not to opt-out of the new, higher minimum wage set by Cook County (Illinois).  When owners of restaurants and other establishments worried that, with higher wage costs, they would have to raise their prices, supporters of the new minimum wage assured them real Oak Parkers would be willing to pay higher prices in order to make sure workers in Oak Park got a fair wage. 

How Could Angela Merkel, Such a Great Leader, Vote Against Same-Sex Marriage?

Germany has voted to legalize same-sex marriage.  By a vote of 393-226, the Bundestag approved the measure today.  What was most interesting to me, however, was this article in The Washington Post: “Why Angela Merkel, known for embracing liberal values, voted against same-sex marriage.”

As the article says, Chancellor Merkel “welcomed over 1 million refugees, abandoned nuclear energy over safety fears and has urged President Trump to respect human rights.”  The clear implication of the article is: Given all the right and proper views she has and all the right and proper things she has done, how could she possibly vote against same-sex marriage?

The Problem With Facts: We Honestly Do Have Our Own Facts

The Economist’s “Word of the Year” for 2016 was “post-truth.”  Fact-checkers at major media outlets are doing a land office business.  Concern about “fake news” is all the rage.  The answer seems pretty simple.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  So the solution to the whole post-truth/fake news problem is to force people to get the facts right.

Except it’s not that simple. Tim Harford, the author of The Undercover Economist and columnist for the Financial Times, wrote an article in FT Weekend last month on “The problem with facts.”  The thing I found most interesting was this section, which is not on how our allegiances, or the “tribes” to which we belong, affect our opinions, but on how our allegiances affect our facts:

Why Donald Trump Won

I didn't have anything to post today, so let me re-post this from Ann Althouse (I hope it is okay to do so):

"Why Trump Won

Because a man like Steve Martin won't fight for himself in a situation like this:

On Tuesday, the comic wrote in a since-deleted tweet, 'When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.  She turned out to be witty and bright as well.'