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.

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. 

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.’”

The Stock Market: Real or Addicted? – A Follow Up

This is a follow up on last Friday’s post, “Is the Stock Market for Real or Just Addicted to Low Interest Rates and Easy Money?”  In writing it, I realized I have been saying the same thing for years.  In looking back at my past posts on the economy, I found I even used the “Christiane F.” analogy, about the problems the stock market would have trying to kick its addiction to low interest rates, before. 

Which gets to the first point of this post: Maybe I’m wrong about the economy.  Maybe things have changed.  Maybe low interest rates are appropriate, and maybe the stock market is for real.  You would have lost a lot of money betting against the stock market over the last ten years.

The 2019 Political World - In Two Cartoons

The one on the left is from Tuesday's Financial Times.  The one on the right is from today's Wall Street Journal.

Foreign Policy in 2020: We Need a President Who Has Thought These Things Through.

While the world looks at the possibility/risk of war between the United States and Iran (understandably), let me suggest that I hope we have people thinking about Russia, China, and our future relations with them.  I doubt very much that President Trump is doing this or that he has asked anybody to do this.  However, perhaps people such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and/or National Security Adviser John Bolton are having it done at the staff level.

As for the Democratic candidates for President, maybe some of them are thinking about this, though it seems most of them are focusing on how to stand out among the twenty-some candidates running.  And in-depth foreign policy analysis isn’t the kind of issue that is going to separate you from the crowd.  (I don’t know how you tie foreign policy to “free” stuff, which seems to be what many of the Democrats are talking about.)  Still, hopefully some of them are actually thinking about this some – because it is important. 

Republican Versus Trumpian

Back in the middle of May, Janan Ganesh, a columnist for the Financial Times, said, per the headline of his column, “Trump needs more Trumpians in the White House.”  According to Mr. Ganesh:

“Between them, [national security advisor John] Bolton and [acting White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney stand for the kind of Republicanism that Mr Trump was meant to have slain in 2016. …

Mike Pompeo could be the secretary of state in a Republican government of yesteryear.  Treasury secretary Steven Munchin could have served any recent Grand Old Party president.  It is much harder to name members of this administration who are truly in President Trump’s distinct image.

Is an Attempt to Impeach President Trump Coming – And Who Will It Help?

I never thought I would sympathize with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and I still don’t.  But if ever I was going to sympathize with her, we are getting close to when it would happen.  Two people who might sympathize with her are a couple of her predecessors, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.  Messrs. Boehner and Ryan understand the problems that Ms. Pelosi is having with the impeachment wing of her party because of the problems they had with the right-wing crazies in their caucuses.  The members of the “Freedom Caucus” and others among the House Republicans seemed to have this theory that somehow it was better to hold out for 100%, and wind up with nothing, than to agree to accept 70%.

The impeachment wing of the Democratic caucus is causing Speaker Pelosi many of the same problems – and maybe even more because it appears to be bigger than the right-wing crazy group in the House Republicans.¹ 

President Trump Is So Bad Anything Is a Reason to Get Rid of Him – Or At Least Some People Think So

Democrats are upset that Attorney General William Barr has authorized an investigation into whether the law enforcement and intelligence communities had proper basis for investigating the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign.  The main point they seem to make is that Donald Trump is so bad that, of course, there were proper grounds.  It’s sort of like the Robert Mueller investigation.  When it started out, the Democrats, et al, “knew” Mr. Mueller would find evidence that then-candidate Trump, or at least the Trump campaign, colluded with the Russians – because, after all, Donald Trump is bad, so how else could he have won.  When Mr. Mueller didn’t find evidence of collusion, they pretty much decided that Russian interference was the same thing as collusion in terms of justification for getting rid of President Trump.¹ 

They are also upset that Attorney General Barr has been given authority to declassify information in connection with this investigation.  Because they say he will do it, without regard to national security, in order to help President Trump.  Of course, many of these same people want to breach laws and ignore privacy concerns with respect to the redactions in the Mueller report (also here), so consistency doesn’t really seem to be a real issue here – other than “President Trump is bad” and nothing else matters.