Tag Archives: Russia

Sanctions and the War in the Ukraine

Later this year (probably in May), Australia will be holding elections for its parliament.  Similary, France will be holding its presidential elections in May and June.  Meanwhile, West Virginia has a case that the Supreme Court heard this week challenging the EPA over potential power plant regulations.   What do these two events have to do with the war in the Ukraine — everything.

The Russian-sympathizing Party of Treason want to blame the current Administration for the Russian attack on the Ukraine because we did not have a clear set of sanctions outlined prior to the invasion to deter the invasion.  Aside from the fact that it is unclear that anything would have deterred the brutal dictator who currently governs Russia, this framing of the situation relies on the fact that a large number of Americans have no real sense of how politics or international relations work which brings us back to our starting point.

Even in the U.S. where we are supposedly one country with one national interest, there are still local interests.  And so, state and local officials who face an entirely different set of voters than the national leaders find that the interests of their state and city are in opposition to what may be best for the nation as a whole.  If that is true for different regions in the same nation, it is even more true for different nations.  Potential sanctions that are relatively painless for the U.S. might be extremely painful for other countries and vice versa.  And the governments in our allies have to face their voters too.   If they want to be in office next year, they have to consider what the voters in their countries want.  Agreing to a set of sanctions that merely protects the U.S. economy and not their own is not a viable option. Continue Reading...

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Foreign Elections — Spring/Summer 2019

The next two months will see several elections in our allies/major democracies. 

This weekend is the election in Spain for both houses of their parliament.  In Spain, the lower house is elected by proportional representation on a provincial basis.  While there is a nominal 3% threshold in each province, the (fifty) provinces range from one seat (in which whomever finishes first gets the seat) to thirty-six seats (in which case the threshold makes a real difference as it would take slightly over 2.7% to win a seat).  In the Senate, most of the provinces get four seats.  While voters directly elect most of the members of the Senate, the catch is that voters have one vote less than the number of seats (i.e. three votes in a province with four seats) which translates into the largest party getting three seats and the second-place party getting one seat.  The regional parliaments also get to appoint the remaining fifty-eight members of the Senate.  For this election, there are five national parties (ranging from two Democratic Socialist parties to a Trumpian nationalist party) and several regional parties. 

There are three things to look at in the results from Spain.  First, is there a natural majority for either of the two main blocs (the two Democratic Socialist parties vs. the two center-right party)?  Second, how does the Trumpian (Vox) party perform?  Third, how do the regional parties (which want increased local autonomy/independence) perform?  From the traditional American foreign policy, we would prefer a result that creates a strong functional government capable of being a partner with us.  Russia (and our current administration) would prefer a divided election result with strong performances by Vox and the regional parties pulling Spain further away from NATO and the European Union and potentially splitting Spain (one of the larger European countries) into several separate countries focused on their grievances with each other rather than building a strong Europe. Continue Reading...

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The Week in Review

There is an old saying that a week is a lifetime in politics.  In most weeks, there is a lot happening either behind the scenes or at lower levels (e.g., committee hearings and markups on bills that nobody is watching).  It is the rare week, however, that so much is taking place front and center competing for the attention of the American public.

The big story of the week was the non-vote on and the collapse of the Republican effort at major health care reform — the so-called Affordable Health Care Act (a name that in itself was an attack on the bill that it was trying to “repeal and replace,” the Affordable Care Act.   There are several significant aspects to this non-event.

First, despite their efforts, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan could not get the sizable Republican majority in the House to pass a bill (forget the exact details of the last version of the bill, they could not get a majority behind any version) on one of the top Republican priorities of the past seven years.  While Trump may have been a great negotiator, it is very easy to reach a two-sided deal.  (Of course, it’s possible that Trump’s belief in his negotiating skill may be one of his great delusions.  He may have just been offering the right deal at the right time and actually have been taken to the cleaners in his business negotiations.)When you have three or more sides to a deal, however, it becomes very difficult to keep everybody on board.  This problem is particularly true in politics — when one faction thinks that a bill is too conservative and the other faction thinks that the bill is too liberal, there really isn’t any change that could make both sides happy.  At that point, it’s not really about negotiating but selling.

It’s pretty clear why the vote was cancelled.  Ryan was facing a humiliating defeat that would have been the American equivalent of a vote of no-confidence.  Some whip counts had the bill likely to get only 170-190 votes.  In other words, if the Democrats had put up a substitute, the Democratic alternative might have gotten more votes than the Trump-Ryan bill.   As has been discussed many times in the past, it is debatable whether the Republican Party exists as anything other than a line on the ballot.  The various factions of the Republican Party are unified only by their agreement that they are not Democrats.  While the Democratic Party has its own problems, most Democrats agree on the general shape of a policy.  Our disagreement tends to be on the details (e.g., should the minimum wage be raised to $12 or $15, should it be automatically indexed for inflation, should it be indexed to the local cost of living) and what can be passed.  It is debatable how much longer Ryan can serve as Speaker of the House if he can’t get significant legislation passed.  The next big challenge will be tax reform — something else that only unifies the Republican Party as a slogan and not as a real policy.

Second, the failure of the attempt to legislatively destroy the Affordable Care Act is not the end of the process.  As discussed in other posts, most statutes give significant discretion to regulatory agencies.  The Trump Administration has the responsibility for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the people responsible for the regulations are hostile to the basic goals of the Affordable Care Act.  There will be significant court fights over the next three to four years as the Department of Health and Human Services attempts to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act through regulations.

Third, any attempt to fix the Affordable Care Act is probably dead through the 2018 elections (just as it has been dead since 2010).  It is all but impossible to pass a perfect bill.  Some provisions that would work in practice generate too much controversy during the legislative process and get dropped.  The process of assembling enough votes to pass legislation typically requires some changes that eliminate or weaken significant elements of the program.  Even if a bill were passed intact, the exact policy mix is based on a projection of how the public will respond to the mix of incentives and penalties contained in the bill.  Because the way people act in the real world does not correspond to any model of how “reasonable economic person” should act, that first mix of incentives will almost always be wrong — sometimes getting too much of the desired response, sometimes getting not enough.  In short, every program will need some changes to fix what the initial version got wrong.  The Republican Party unfortunately appears to have decided to wait and see if the cumulative effects of the minor flaws in the Affordable Care Act will lead to disaster in the health care market.  (I think that this is the dumbest idea ever.  While there are some problems developing, I don’t think that we are anywhere near market collapse. More importantly, if the market does collapse, it is unclear that the Republican could rebuild their preferred version of the market out of the wreckage.)

Fourth, there remains the issue of whether the procedure that the Republicans used for this bill will be the model for future legislation.  The AHCA was not just fast-tracked; it was absurdly fast-tracked.  For most bills, there are hearings on the bill, followed by committee-markup, followed by floor debate (including amendments) in both houses.  This process takes time.  (For the original Affordable Care Act, the Republicans claimed that Democrats were moving too fast by having a final vote after over eight months of hearings, markup, and debate.)  There were no hearings for the AHCA.  Mark-up took place less than a week after the filing of the bill, and the floor vote would have taken place in less than three weeks after filing (with a similar fast track planned for the Senate).  Of course, such a fast track makes it hard for people to begin to focus and discuss particular problems with the legislation, hindering the ability of the opposition to develop.   When it works, such a fast track makes strategic sense.  Thus, could this be the new normal.

Of course, health care was not the only thing happening this week.  There was also the hearings of the House Intelligence Committee on Russia’s role in the campaign.  Both the hearing and its aftermath were big.  The hearings made clear to anyone with a brain that Trump’s allegations that there was any type of surveillance directed at the Trump campaign or the transition are delusional.  They also made clear that several people associated with the Trump campaign or the transition did engage in some forms of misconduct and that the FBI is investigating such misconduct.  (Whether those investigations lead to any big fish currently in the Trump Administration is unclear.)   Lastly, it is clear that the current chair of the House Intelligence Committee is too closely associated with the Trump Administration to fairly head any congressional investigation into this issue.

And if that was not enough, the Senate had its own hearings this week on the nomination of Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  As always, the nominee was frustrating in not answering questions about what agenda he will be bringing to the Supreme Court.  And there are rumors floating out there that are concerning regarding comments that Judge Gorsuch may have made about maternity leave.  It is unclear, however, that there is the type of smoking gun that could lead Republican Senators to vote against Judge Gorsuch.

Lastly, in what may have been buried in the news in light of everything else, the Supreme Court issued a significant ruling on presidential appointment powers.  In an opinion addressing the validity of the appointment of an acting general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board, the Supreme Court broadly interpreted a federal statute limiting who can serve in an “acting” capacity for a vacant position that requires Senate confirmation.  The short version of the opinion is that, a person nominated to fill a vacant position may not serve in that position in an “acting” capacity unless that person had served as first assistant to that position for at least three of the last twelve months.  In short, this opinion makes it much harder for an Administration to temporarily fill a vacant position with a person of its choosing, even if the Administration intends to promote from within an agency.  In particular, it is highly unlikely that any nominee for a position will be eligible to run an agency as the acting head of the agency.

Given the problem that this Administration is having with finding nominees for such positions, anything that hinders the ability of this Administration to put its own people in charge while the Senate considers nominees has to be frustrating.  (Another example of how the partisan separation of powers litigation that Republicans filed over the past eight years is coming back to bite them.)  Of course, this Administration has its own unique solution.  Unlike past administrations which used “czars” in the White House to run policy, the Trump Administration appears to have settled on a different aspect of Russian history — the commissar.  According to report, the White House staff is sending liasons to office at various departments and agencies to assure that the departments and agencies are complying with the White House goals, policies, and directives.  The practice of having political officers to assure loyalty worked so well (not) for the Soviet Union’s military.  So of course, the Russophile-in-Chief decided to adopt the same idea for the U.S. government.

At the end of the day, some very big stones were thrown into the pond this week.  Undoubtedly, we will be talking a lot more about the ripples over the next several months (and maybe even into the next year when they become issues in the 2018 elections).

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Friday Rant: Idiots and Morons

A long time ago I had a boss my family referred to as “Bad Eric”. (I later had a boss named “Good Eric”). Anyway, Bad Eric thought he was a really smart guy. I’m not talking about any of those esoteric views of intelligence, he thought his actual, tested, IQ was higher than anyone else’s in the company, especially mine. This was a big deal to him. He liked to say hello to me in the following way “Good Morning, you dumb b***h”, although in fairness, he sometimes used the “c” word in lieu of the “b” word.

Working for Bad Eric was no picnic, but I did end up learning the difference between “idiot” and “moron”. It turns out that “moron” used to have a technical meaning in DSM classifications of someone with an IQ of 80 or below. (100 is average on a Bell Curve.) And so, when I talk about the stupid things that voters do, I no longer refer to them as morons, I use the strictly pejorative term “idiot”. And today, I’m going to rant about idiots. Feel free to skip to the end to find out what happened when Bad Eric and I went head to head in the quest for who was smarter.

In the past few days, a number of media outlets have gone out and interviewed Trumpkin voters who will now be affected by changes to the ACA. Their overall response is that while they do understand that they will no longer be able to afford insurance, and thus cancer treatments, insulin and other necessary medical care, they believe that  #TheAngryPumpkin will actually save them because he’ll negotiate with Paul Ryan and let them keep, basically, the ACA as it is. I kid you not. Idiots.

Rachel Maddow spent most of last night talking about  the connection between the Administration and the Russians. If you haven’t seen it, watch it here. You’ll need to sign in to MSNBC, but it will be an hour that you won’t regret.  It’s a lot of proof and the timeline. The end segments are an interview with ex-Ambassador Fried, who explains what is really going on with the State Department purge. Be smart, understand what’s at stake.

I receive a lot of  communications — emails, texts, messages…and some of them make me really angry. I’m going to share a few of things I hope to never see again. First, and this is so far the ultimate winner for 2017. Paraphrased: “My issue is the Pacific Garbage Dump. When are you going to fix that?”. It really is going to be hard to top that. If you know me personally, you are well aware of the answer I wanted to send back. Idiot.

The Indivisible team with which I work is concerned about reaching out to people of color in our county. We are planning on attending some trainings, and working to come up with a plan. I interact with a man who refers to himself as “melanic” (and I had to look it up – it means someone with a lot of melanin in his/her skin.) I offered to meet with him, invited him to a number of functions, and his response was to send me an article entitled “Your Calls for Unity are Divisive as F**k” (Source) which linked to a second article where the first line was “I don’t like white women”. (Source) No one here is an idiot, but this is not a way to win friends and influence people. I want to work together, he wants to insult me. Truly a sad situation, but at least he’s stopped calling and yelling at me.

People like to complain to me that I’m personally not doing enough to solve their problems. These “problems” involve impeaching #TrumptyDumpty, stopping the Muslim Ban, saving the ACA, making the DNC over so that it’s a progressive organization, and you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of communications from people who want to work on these, and other issues, and want support and guidance. My objection is to the people who believe any one person can actually fix these things. I am unclear whether this can be attributed to laziness, or frustration, or abject terror. But I don’t have time to find out.

I’m working with five candidates running locally this year. Am providing tangible support in the form of advice, strategy planning, money, and am hoping that I’ll be able to find people who will help knock doors. Because this is the start of  how we stop the bleeding of the government. We are a representative democracy, and the only way to  move the needle is to elect local people this year, and state and Federal people next year. We do that by knocking doors and giving money until it hurts. I hope you will join me; there are elections in every state, city and town this year, next up being the jungle primary in Georgia. Here in Pennsylvania, the ballots will be announced over the next week, and then the canvassing starts. To anyone who contacts me, my answer from here on out is “are you knocking doors?” and if he/she says no, I’m done. Writing postcards and letters, and calling reps is good as far as it goes, but those people need to be replaced. It’s easier to canvass for a local person, so if you’re new, consider this year practice. And a huge YAY!!! to every person who is running for office this year. It matters in every way imaginable.

So circling back to Bad Eric. He wanted to us to take online IQ tests and see who got the higher score. I told him that we should do it the real way: he could take the Mensa test and compare his score to the one I’d gotten. A real contest. Let’s just say that I stayed a Mensa officer, he didn’t get into Mensa, and I ended up taking the job working for Good Eric at another company.

End of rant — message me if you’re ready to start canvassing, and I’ll cut your turf for your neighborhood, give you a script and training and you too can help save the world.

 

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A New Foreign Policy??

For Democrats and, especially for those progressives who voted for third party candidates or stayed home, the last four weeks have been a reminder that there are significant differences between the policies of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.  The nominees to fill many cabinet positions are people who are either clueless about their responsibilities (Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development) or actually hostile to significant parts of the core responsibilities of their departments (EPA, Labor, Justice, Interior, Education, Health and Human Services).   The past eight years might not have been perfect for the progressive agenda and Secretary Clinton might not have been pushing as much of the progressive agenda as some would have wanted, but it is clear that the Trump Administration will be working to reverse not just the last eight years, but much of the past fifty to eighty years.

While the nominees for most positions so far seem to be the dream team of the far right, the current rumors for Secretary of State represent a nightmare for even Republicans.  Since World War II, the two parties have shared a common basic foreign policy.  For both parties, the original foreign policy was to contain communism and to promote stability by means of adding even more countries to regional defense agreements.   Within each of the two parties, there was a disagreement about how much we should emphasize promoting human rights and democracy as opposed to seeking to stabilize government willing to work with us on our overall goal of defeating the Soviet Union.

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Strength in Leadership

332786783v3_225x225_FrontEarlier this week, Donald Trump — again — expressed his admiration for the strong leadership of Vladimir Putin as compared to the current leadership of the United States.  It is understandable why somebody who is the head of a closely-held family business would sympathize with the leadership style of Vladimir Putin.  There is a lot of similarity in the ability of such individuals to make decisions for their company or country between such a business and a police state.  The leader of a democracy, however, does not have the same ability.

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