Is Chief Justice Roberts Weak? What About Justice Kavanaugh? Whatever Dingell Wants, Dingell Gets! Congressional Hypocrisy Reigns.Trump's China Trade War.
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This is just a personal observation but I believe Chief Justice Roberts is a weak person. No doubt he is very bright but I believe he is more interested in creating comity among the Justices than making sound decisions. I believe that is the reason for his vote on Obamacare and now the most recent one regarding Planned Parenthood..
It would appear Justice Kavanaugh also came under Robert's sway with respect to his own recent vote regarding taking up the matter of Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood. It seems to me Kavanaugh remains intimidated by what happened regarding his raucous hearing process and thus did not want to make waves.
By being the 4th Justice he would have allowed The SCOTUS to debate the matter of government funding of various programs which, I believe, needs to be resolved.
And:
Has the entire federal judiciary become politicized? (See 1 below.)
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Hypocrisy continues to reign when it comes to Congressional veracity and integrity (See 2 below.)
And:
Whatever Dingell wants Dingell Gets. (See 2a below.)
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As I wrote yesterday. (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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Another angle on Trump's China Trade War. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
The Tyranny of the Judiciary and What to Do about It
Almost from Day One of his presidency, Donald Trump has been stymied by judges on lower federal courts issuing restraining orders to stop his executive orders and bring his agenda to a screeching halt.
On November 10, National Review ran "Obama's Judges Continue Thwarting Trump," a fine analysis by Andrew C. McCarthy, who explains what's really going on with the injunctions issued by these "rogue" judges:
You may have been under the impression that Trump won the election, and that choosing among competing policies is what elections are about. That is how it is supposed to work in our free, constitutional republic. But day by day, the space for free choice is shrinking. To the Lawyer Left, elections represent a policy choice only when Democrats win. The rest of the time, the courts are there to consolidate the Left's gains, to repel democratically driven policy shifts.
McCarthy demonstrates that, contrary to Chief Justice John Roberts, at least some of our federal courts have become politicized. It's simply not the case that "[w]e do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," as Roberts alleges. Perhaps Roberts is confused about what should be and what is.
McCarthy touches on the judicial overrides of Trump's decisions on DACA and the Keystone Pipeline. And let's not forget the travel ban, key provisions of which SCOTUS reinstated. McCarthy began his article by predicting that the president's new policy on asylum claims would soon be stopped:
As I write on Friday, the restraining order hasn't come down yet. But it's just a matter of time. Some federal district judge, somewhere in the United States, will soon issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the Trump administration's restrictions on asylum applications.
That's exactly what happened nine days later on Nov. 19. The next day at The Corner, Mr. McCarthy wrote that the injunction "took a few days longer" than he expected. (His blog post didn't contain a link to Judge Jon Tigar's restraining order, but one can find it here and here.)
It is thought that the only way to deal with misbehaving judges is impeachment. We read at Ballotpedia that a total of fifteen federal judges have been impeached: "Of those fifteen: eight were convicted by the Senate, four were acquitted by the Senate, and three resigned before an outcome at trial." Eight convictions over America's 230-year history might indicate that federal judges are a fairly decent lot. However, by 2003, there had been sixty-one impeachment investigations of federal judges. Here's the list.
Impeachment is a difficult means of dealing with rogue federal judges, and it may be even more difficult once the House is taken over by Democrats in January. So what can be done to rein in a runaway federal Judiciary? Well, in 2005, the Brookings Institution ran "Reining In a Runaway Federal Judiciary?" by Alan Murphy and Thomas E. Mann. It's worth reading, but they offer no solution:
Throughout American history, legislators and presidents have attempted to bring independent-minded jurists into submission through other means as well, such as packing and unpacking the courts, restricting their jurisdiction, cutting judicial budgets, defying court orders, and investigating individual judges. Yet, as with impeachment, these tactics have met with minimal success and now are widely viewed as illegitimate and threatening to judicial independence.
In 2006, however, the Yale Law Journal ran "Removing Federal Judges without Impeachment" by Saikrishna Prakash and Steven D. Smith, who argue that judges can be removed through other means than impeachment. They examine the history of the term "good behavior," as required by the second sentence of Article III:
Those who think judges may only be removed by impeachment might suppose that history reveals that "good Behaviour" was a term of art that meant something like "tenure for life defeasible only by impeachment." History actually proves that good behavior was independent of impeachment.
When judges on lower federal courts issue restraining orders that stop a president from performing his duties or that override his judgment, they need to have the Constitution on their side, because their orders can be reversed by higher courts. Though they have their judgeships for life, judges should pay a price when they so presumptuously overstep.
Unlike the Legislative and the Executive Branches, the Judicial Branch of the federal government doesn't police itself; it's left up to Congress to get rid of bad judges. Perhaps that should be changed. Perhaps judges who are routinely overridden need to be relieved of their duties with an automatic "three strikes" mechanism. In the real world, professionals who repeatedly foul up lose their jobs. Why can't the federal Judiciary, not the Congress, get rid of judges who demonstrate a warped appreciation of the Constitution or who are just plain incompetent?
It doesn't seem right that one person in one branch of government can summarily stop the activities of another branch of government. Something needs to be done. But if impeachment is too much, then what's to be done about these lower-court judges throwing monkey wrenches into the executive? At the very least, appeals of these injunctions need to be greatly expedited.
What President Trump is trying to do with his executive orders is protect America by stopping invasions. What Chuck and Nancy and the open borders crew want is to import poverty, and with it new Democratic voters. They don't care about the cost to taxpayers, nor do they care about how these invasions are changing America and her culture. When it comes to obeying unconstitutional injunctions or defying them in order to protect America, a decent president does the latter. The tyranny of the Judiciary must end.
Although judicial gnats have been pestering him, President Trump has been fairly judicious with his executive orders. One E.O. he'd surely get some blowback on from "Obama judges" is an E.O. to end birthright citizenship. However, such resistance may be the very reason for the president to go ahead and do it. For Trump to have a truly transformative presidency, he must confront and ratchet back the Deep State and the Lawyer Left.
Article III of the U.S. Constitution outlines the role of the Judiciary in our system. It's rather shorter than the first two articles, as it consists of 377 words and can easily fit on a single page. In the first sentence of Article III, we read that the "judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Article III gives Congress the authority to create and to destroy "inferior courts." During our entire history, such federal courts have been abolished only twice. There was the Judiciary Act of 1801 that backed out the "midnight judges" of President Adams. Then there was the short-lived Commerce Court in 1913.
Except for the Supreme Court, it would seem that Article III gives the Congress carte blanche to abolish the entire federal judiciary. If such a radical reorg of the judiciary seems "a bridge too far" right now, then perhaps Congress could abolish just the Ninth Circuit – just to send a message.
Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.
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2) Reveal the Congressional Hush Fund Hypocrites
Which is worse: candidate, businessman, and then still private citizen Donald Trump using his own money to make what Hillary Clinton might call "bimbo eruptions" go away to protect his brand and himself from personal embarrassment, or Congress using taxpayer money in a slush fund to pay off those sexually harassed by sitting officeholders?
As Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, notes in USA Today:
Literally a year ago – as the #MeToo era was erupting – the nation was waking up to news that a secret congressional "hush fund" had been used by Members of Congress to pay off accusers of sexual misconduct. Taxpayer money – yours and mine – was used to pay off these alleged victims[.] ...
Nobody knows how many congressmen and Senators are involved, and if [Pelosi] is a willing participant to keep all of this a secret she will forfeit credibility on every other issue[.] ...
What we know already is devastating. We know congressmen John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Blake Fahrentold (R-Tex.) used this "hush fund" to settle with alleged victims. Both men have already left Congress.
We also know that none of the beneficiaries of this slush fund has been threatened with indictment and incarceration for campaign finance violations since suppressing such information, as Rep. Nadler puts it, amounts to committing a fraud on the American people using their own money.
How many of Trump's accusers are guilty of the very infraction they accuse him of? How many defended the practice and fought to keep it secret and escape accountability with the voters? In Trump's case, Professor Alan Dershowitz points out, if he was using his own money to contribute to his own campaign, there is no crime:
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz frustrated MSNBC's coverage of Donald Trump's payments to former Playmate Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, repeatedly siding with Trump on the issue of the legality of a candidate paying "hush money to anyone he wants during a campaign."
"The president doesn't break the law if, as a candidate, he contributes to his own campaign," said Dershowitz (transcript via RCP). "So if he gave $1 million to two women as hush money, there would be no crime. If he directed his lawyer to do it, and he would compensate the lawyer, he's committed no crime." ...
[A] president is entitled to making such payments:
The president is entitled to pay hush money to anyone he wants during a campaign. There are no restrictions on what a candidate can contribute to his own campaign. So if, in fact, the president directed Cohen to do it as his lawyer and was going to compensate him for it, the president committed no crime. If Cohen did it on his own then Cohen commits the crime.
Veteran campaign finance lawyer Dan Becker agrees with the assessment by Dershowitz that private citizen Trump committed no crime and was merely protecting his brand:
Meanwhile, an expert campaign finance lawyer said in an interview published Monday that he is not impressed with the Department of Justice's evidence that effectively links Trump to campaign finance violations after the recent release of the Cohen sentencing memo.
Dan Backer, the lawyer, told Forbes that there appears to be no evidence to corroborate the DOJ's apparent assertion of any illegality on Trump's part.
Backer, a veteran campaign counsel, said it is common practice for high-profile individuals and companies to take part in these kinds of payment arrangements. He said Trump is a brand, he has carried out similar payments for years and these so-called "hush-buys" will likely continue.
"Brand protection is not a campaign contribution," he told the magazine.
As former FEC chairman Bradley Smith pointed out in an interview with Fox News host Mark Levin, hush money payments are not a campaign finance violation if it can be shown they would have happened in the absence of a campaign:
So, what the courts and what the statute says very clearly what the FEC has said in its regulation is if something is not an expense that arises directly out of a campaign, for example, you rent offices for a campaign headquarters, you hire a campaign manager, you pay for TV ads, you print up buttons and bumper stickers, those are all things you're doing because you're running for office.
But the fact that something helps your campaign doesn't make it a campaign expense. For example, I decide I'd look better on the campaign trail if I had teeth whitened. Not a campaign expense. I want a new suit to look good at the debate, not a campaign expense. Where it takes something that's more relevant to what we are seeing going on recently, as you alluded to sort of the Trump payments to some of these women who alleged various affairs and so on.
If I'm a successful businessman and I decide I want to run for office and I said, I've got all the lawsuits against me as businessmen often do against their companies and so on, these are all a bunch of BS, there is no merit to them, but I don't want them out there. I don't want people asking me about them, I don't want them dragging my campaign, settle those lawsuits, tell my lawyer. I can't pay the settlements with campaign funds, that's not a campaign expenditure, the obligation did not arise out of my running for office. So that's the long answer to your question, the short answer is a simple no, paying somebody for something to be quiet about something that was done or alleged years before is not a campaign expense.
Over a year ago, H.R. 4494 – the Congressional Accountability and Hush Fund Elimination Act – was introduced. It's a bill that called for publicizing the names of those who used the hush fund to pay for these so-called "settlements." Many in both parties co-sponsored his bill, but it went nowhere. It is time it should go somewhere. As Penny Nance notes:
If Pelosi doesn't move immediately to disclose the names of those in Congress who used this hush fund, she will be part of the biggest sexual misconduct scandal in history.
Even bigger than Stormy Daniels.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
2a)
Abolish the Senate and Electoral College? Why Not Tear Up the Constitution?
Former Congressman John Dingell, Jr., a partisan Democrat whose immediate family has controlled the same seat in the House of Representatives for 86 years, has some suggestions for fixing Congress. We should abolish the Senate and the Electoral College because they're undemocratic, "despite the constitutional hurdles of doing so." In 2015, Dingell retired from the U.S. House seat he's held since 1955, the seat he inherited from his father, John Dingell, Sr., who first won it in 1932. The seat has passed to John Jr.'s much-younger wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, who was just re-elected in November. (Full disclosure: For 20 years, my wife and I have lived in Dearborn, Michigan, which is inside the Dingell fiefdom and looks as though it may be in perpetuity.)
Dingell is kvetching about "the complete collapse" of respect for government since he first held office and "an unprecedented cynicism about the nobility of public service itself." Things were much better in 1958, when "73 percent of Americans trusted the federal government 'to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.'" Now it's down to 18%, and Dingell blames this decline mostly on Republican wrongdoing like Watergate, the Iraq War, and "Ronald Reagan's folksy but popular message that government was not here to help." "[W]orst of all by far," he writes, is "the Trumpist mind-set" held by "jackasses who see 'deep state' conspiracies in every part of government[.]"
What really burns Dingell is how his party's numerical electoral advantage – widely expected to continue growing as caravans of illegal aliens flood into the country – isn't translating into an America run strictly according to Democrat ideas. Why not? Because "sparsely populated, usually conservative states can block legislation supported by a majority of the American people." Flyover Republicans, and the protections for political minorities built into the Constitution, are holding up progress! This is especially the case in the Senate, where California's 40 million people have only two senators, "while the 20 smallest states have a combined population totaling less than that ... have 40 senators." We have this "antiquated" and "downright dangerous" political imbalance only "because of an 18th-century political deal" – a deal, it should be noted, that someone thought should be preserved under glass at the National Archives.
Dingell never specifies how the current structure of the Senate is "downright dangerous," nor does he explain why the Great Compromise over Senate representation made sense in the 18th century, when a tiny Rhode Island could object to being bullied by Massachusetts, but it's now "plain crazy" for the 20 smallest states (and a lot of the bigger ones) to resist being bullied by California.
It's obvious that Dingell positively resents the minority, whom he variously describes as "usually conservative," a "vocal rump ... of obnoxious asses [who] can hold the entire country hostage to extremist views." He dismisses 63 million Trump-supporters as "jackasses ... a minority of a minority ... the weakest link in the chain of more than three centuries of our American republic." (That makes twice in one article he calls Americans who won't vote Democrat "asses." Did I mention I'm one of his family's constituents?)
The reality remains that while Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote with 48%, Trump still won 46%, which isn't the insignificant minority Dingell imagines. He shares the conceit of his party that Democrats' less than half of the electorate constitutes "a majority of the American people" and that the slightly smaller less than half of us is a negligible fraction of extremists.
Other proponents of erasing the Senate, like Parker Richards at The Atlantic, point to the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh as evidence of Senate "disproportionality," because the majority "represented just 44 percent of the country's population." Jay Willis at GQ has the same complaint. "An undemocratic body yields undemocratic results. The 50 senators who voted to confirm the wildly-unpopular Brett Kavanaugh represent only 44 percent of the population." Yes, Kavanaugh's unpopularity was wild – wild, baseless, and irrational, stoked by false witnesses, a lying media, and a hyper-cynical Senate minority willing to destroy an innocent man to mollify their abortion-industry backers. The speed with which a credulous public was turned into a hysterical mob baying for Kavanaugh's blood on no evidence whatsoever reveals the genius of the Framers' interposing a safeguard between the often naked madness of an inflamed majority and what James Madison called "the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions."
To say the Kavanaugh confirmation is proof that the Senate is undemocratic is essentially to say that a truly democratic body – reacting to the shrieks of the #MeToo movement and a public opinion distorted by sound bites and Twitter – would have denied the nomination. That result might have been more democratic, but it would also, based on false witnesses and the slanders of the mob, be the kind of "pernicious" result Madison wanted to prevent.
Dingell says the "jackasses" who share Trump's mistrust of government are "the weakest link in the chain" of the republic, but he's wrong. People who mistrust government understand the republic better than he does, because it was people who mistrusted government who created it. "If men were angels," wrote Madison in Federalist 51, "no government would be necessary." As it is, while the people are "the primary control on the government," because people aren't angels "experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." But if it's progressives trying to throw off those precautions, and not we, how are we the weakest link?
On the other hand, Democrats are growing increasingly exasperated with how the Constitution's auxiliary precautions keep putting the brakes on their agenda. In 2001, when Barack Obama was an Illinois senator and law professor, hecomplained about the Constitution as an impediment to the goal of radical income redistribution. While it dictates "what the Federal government can't do to you," he said, it fails to command "what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf." This past year has seen the sudden rise of mainstream Democrats wanting to abolish ICE, which enforces constitutionally mandated naturalization and immigration laws. Large segments of the party are embracing democratic socialism, heedless that socialism requires the extinguishment of guaranteed individual liberties. Nearly 40% of Democrats support repealing the Second Amendment. Now John Dingell, the "Dean of the Congress," in addition to abolition of the Senate and Electoral College, is calling for the "elimination of money in campaigns" at the expense of the First Amendment.
Oddly, Dingell repeats Ben Franklin's warning about "constant vigilance" if we're to protect the "precious but fragile gift" the Founders gave us. But their gift was a Republic, "if you can keep it." Some of us are trying to keep it. Dingell and many of his fellow Democrats sound awfully anxious to throw it away.
T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at trclancy@yahoo.com.
If Tuesday’s Oval Office meeting is any indication, it’s going to be a rough two years.
By Michelle Cottle
Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.
Talk about gripping political theater. President Trump’s televised sit-downwith Democratic congressional leaders in the Oval Office on Tuesday was fast-paced, spicy and even occasionally edifying — though perhaps not in the way its participants intended.
Topic A was Mr. Trump’s cherished border wall and, more specifically, whether he really intends to shut down parts of the government next week if Congress doesn’t give him the $5 billion in funding he’s demanding.
Starting out, Mr. Trump tried to keep things “friendly,” by his terms at least: He spouted his usual folderol about the indispensability of a wall; he spun scary fictions about hordes ofterrorists, criminals and— in a slightly fresher twist —contagion-carrying migrants swarming the southern border; he mansplained to Nancy Pelosi, the once and future speaker of the House, how the legislative process works; he shrugged off multiple jabs at his habitual dishonesty by Ms. Pelosi and her Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer; and, as usual, he cheerfully ignored his vice president, Mike Pence, whospent the entirety of the 15-plus-minute confab doinghis best impression of a throw pillow.
“See! We get along!” the president enthused after his Democratic guests agreed that border security is important.But after being gigged by Mr. Schumer about having repeatedly threatened a shutdown, Mr. Trump couldn’t resist going all Tough Guy for the cameras. He sat up extra straight, gave his suit jacket that who’s-your-daddy? snap he so loves, and thrust his chin at the Senate leader:
“You know what? You want to put that on my — I’ll take it!” he challenged. “If we don’t get what we want — one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through a military, through anything you want to call — I will shut down the government, absolutely... And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck.”
And with that, the president moved to wrap up the discussion, leaving Chuck, Nancy and everyone else to marvel at the weirdness of what had just transpired — and, just as important, what it all means.
Short answer: Whatever happens with the funding standoff, the next two years of divided government promise to be a freak show of finger-pointing and point-scoring and people talking over and past one another with no hope of, or even much interest in, engaging the other side. While entertaining, this also risks taking the level of dysfunction to new depths likely to further erode public faith in government — no small feat considering that the public already holds the government in lower esteem than your average war criminal.
Indeed, if Tuesday’s preview was any indication, Mr. Trump will spend the rest of his term talking smack,patronizing and tweaking congressional Democrats, and playing ever more wildly to his base, even as Democrats express growing frustration about their inability to have a rational conversation with a president who lives — with apologies to Mr. Rogers — in his own Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
Both Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer looked alternately bemused and exasperated by their visit, and both pleaded that the negotiations were best conducted in private. At one point, Mr. Trump scolded Ms. Pelosi: “But it’s not bad, Nancy. It’s called transparency.” This sent the House leader into a flustered effort to insist that you cannot have “transparency” when the parties involved aren’t operating with the same set of facts. “Let us have a conversation where we don’t have to contradict in public the statistics that you put forth,” she urged later in the conversation. The data Mr. Trump turned to “are not factual” she said. “We have to have an evidence-based conversation.”
Translation: The only thing Ms. Pelosi considered transparent about this encounter was Mr. Trump’s dishonesty.
Now, maybe relations will be better behind the scenes, when there’s less impetus to grandstand or score points. (While Mr. Trump was the one in full diva mode, Mr. Schumer fired off a couple of good zingers.) Maybe progress can happen here and there, on select issues. (Criminal justice reform?) But, as far as public encounters go, don’t look for anything more productive any time soon.
After the meeting, Ms. Pelosi was less restrained, reportedly offering this piquant assessment to her conference colleagues: “It was so wild. It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.”
As for the issue of wall funding, the Democratic leader was even more cutting: “It’s like a manhood thing with him — as if manhood can be associated with him,” she said. “This wall thing.”
Buckle up, people. With or without a shutdown, things promise to get even bumpier.
3a)
Everybody’s Wrong: Donald Trump Won the Chuck-n-Nancy Meeting, and Here’s Why
All that in-front-of-the-cameras civility is fake anyway. Trump dispensed with it. It was refreshing, and his people will love it, shutdown or no shutdown.
By Matt Lewis
If Tuesday’s instantly famous Oval Office meeting is a harbinger of things to come, it’s going to be a long two years for “Chuck and Nancy.”
Presidents can be intimidating, and Trump had home court advantage during Tuesday’s meeting. However, Chuck Schumer seemed especially outmatched by a very forceful Donald Trump. As Bill Kristol (no Trump apologist) put it: “[B]ased on what I saw of their respective performances in that Oval Office meeting today, I don’t understand why it’s Nancy Pelosi who’s facing a leadership challenge and Chuck Schumer who isn’t.”
The mainstream media will focus on the immediate seriousness of a shutdown and lament the lack of civility in politics. But I suspect many Americans will see that there was something refreshing about Trump’s public stance.
Politicians often promise to drive a tough bargain (when rallying their base before an election), only to engage in conciliatory rhetoric when face to face with an adversary. The civilized “norm,” in other words, is to be a fake. But here—face to face with his adversaries—Trump defended his decision regarding a wall.
“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck,” Trump declared. “Because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into this country. So I will take the mantle, I will be the one to shut it down. I won’t blame you for it.”
There was something charming about this—and it’s precisely because there was something phony about an old game where Speaker Tip O’Neill might accuse Ronald Reagan of wanting to throw elderly people off Social Security (before dining with the Gipper and telling Irish stories).
Some (on both sides of the aisle) found this old-fashioned chumminess back in those days unsettling because it ostensibly meant that the two sides were colluding against the average man. I just think it was a quaint, yet necessary, form of post-World War II political protocol: suppress your disagreements rather than airing your dirty laundry in front of the “children.”
But even if you lament that loss of public civility, that ship has long since sailed. What good would it do us for Trump, Schumer, and Pelosi to go before the cameras and sound bipartisan, only to shiv each other once the cameras are off?
In a jaded world where secrets are increasingly hard to keep, Trump earns points for authenticity. Pelosi and Schumer repeatedly urged that their negotiating be done in private, but Trump countered with talk of “transparency.” I’m a fan of smoke-filled backrooms, but it pains me to say that Trump seized the high ground (in terms of public opinion) here.
If you are a supporter of the president’s policies, this was an especially welcome display—a rare example of a president publicly fighting for his policy goal: a border wall. The public fight is important. There is no doubt that Trump supporters are passionate about the border wall. The proof that Trump is rhetorically fighting for it is vital—especially if he never actually delivers it.
But maybe he will. For those conservatives who championed Trump based on his status as a fighter, he doesn’t get points just for standing up for the wall. However, he does get extra points for not cowering in the face of a government shutdown.
It has long been axiomatic that Republicans would always get blamed for a shutdown—regardless of the merits. This was partly a function of it being less plausible to believe that Democrats, seen as the party of big government, would want to shut down governmental functions. Trump is the first Republican president I’ve seen whodefied this rule.
Here, we have a president displaying not only that he isn’t afraid of a shutdown battle with Democrats, but also that he welcomes it.“I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut itdown. I’m not going to blame you for it,” he said.
National Review editor Rich Lowry believes this was a tactical mistake for Trump. “The first rule of shutdown fights is never to say that you want a shutdown,”Lowry writes. The only problem here is that the old rules don’t apply to Trump.
Trump has been known to grandstand, only to back down later (just as he has been known to be conciliatory, only to backslide later). He can sometimes justify this as a negotiation tactic, and other times he simply pretends he never said it. It seems implausible that Trump would actually accede to being blamed for what Pelosi (who arguably started this whole thing by using the words) termed a “Trump shutdown.”
It’s impossible to know how this will play out, but I score the opening round in Trump’s favor. Before the mid-terms,I arguedthat Trump might benefit from Democrats winning the House. This would provide him with a foil (see how he handled his Republican opponents and Hillary Clinton in 2016), and/or allow him to blame others for failing to deliver on his policy goals.
Based on Tuesday’s meeting, things seem to be running according to schedule. 3b) A Secure America Requires A Secure Border Wall: So Build It
IBD Editorial
Editorial
Border Wall: President Trump brashly announced "I'm proud to shut down government" if the soon to be dominant Democrats in Congress don't fund his southern border wall. Is he bluffing? Probably not. It's one of the main promises he made during his 2016 presidential campaign. He should keep it. Democrats and Republicans have been slugging it out toe-to-toe for weeks now over building the wall. Democrats have offered a grudging $1.3 billion to build the barrier to illegal immigration, while Republicans seek $5 billion.
Meeting with the Democrats' leaders, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Trump was blunt: "I am proud to shut down the governmentfor border security, Chuck."
He means it. And he should. Earlier this year, Schumer & Co. pushed hard to give amnesty to the so-called "Dreamers." He shut down the government for three days before caving in. Why? Because he feared the illegal immigration issue was so potent it might damage the chances of Democratic congressional candidates.
At the time, the big media treated Schumer as a brave statesman who used all the tools at his disposal to get what he wanted. His closure of the government was viewed almost as a humanitarian gesture, rather than pandering to the far-left of his party and the burgeoning Hispanic vote.
Government Shutdown?
Don't worry. President Trump will get no such treatment. If the government shuts down, he'll be treated as a combination of the Grinch and — no surprise here — Hitler.
The deadline for the talks has been set for the December 21, the Friday before Christmas. But the whole government isn't at risk of shutdown. Parts of the budget were approved back in October, which will leave most of the government open and operating.
As the Daily Caller observed, "Congress has already funded nearly three-fourths of the government and a partial shutdown would lessen stakes involved over negotiations."
We're not absolutists about building a wall. In point of fact, merely enforcing laws now on the books would pretty much take care of our illegal immigration problem. But for a broad swath of Americans the border wall has an enormous symbolic significance that can't be ignored.
What Americans Want
In our most recent IBD/TIPP Poll, we asked Americans to rank their top two priorities for Congress in the coming year. Immigration, with 36% of respondents ranking it No. 1 or No. 2, finished only behind health care costs, which 40% of respondents ranked No. 1 or No. 2. Immigration even ranked ahead of "economy and jobs" (30%) and "national security" (22%).
So, yes, immigration is a big issue. And while other polls suggest Americans would like a "compromise" on building the wall, Trump knows that he will be called a liar by Democrats — and by the Trump-hating media — in 2020 if he doesn't do it.
So Trump is pretty much stuck taking a hard line. Americans expect it. It's a big reason why he was elected in 2016. It's why, in his talks with Schumer and Pelosi, he threatened to have the military build the wall. Their funding is already in place.
The Democratic Party has staked its own future on having a plentiful supply of future votes by illegal aliens grateful to them for making their presence here legal. So we're really not surprised at their adamant opposition. Though they deny it, they are a de facto open-border party.
We're all flattered, certainly, but assimilating and making Americans of that many people would be nearly impossible. We need to control the number arriving to be able to ensure that the U.S.'s government, Constitution and unique way of life, emphasizing individual and economic freedom, are respected and preserved. That's why this is important.
Usually, Republicans cave on such issues. They hate being called "mean," "racist," "nativist," and other names thrown at them by leftists merely for protecting our border. So be it.
But this time there's at least a glimmer of hope that influential GOP members of Congress will stand with Trump. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for one, issued a statement saying, among other things: "It's simple: We as Americans have the right to decide who gets to come into our country, not immigrants seeking to force their way in."
If You Build It, They Won't Come
House members have proposed legislation to show we're serious about our borders, though in the new Democrat-led Congress such legislation has virtually no chance. Still, we would hope that our politicians would make clear to their constituents, who might not understand what's at stake: Nations that don't control their borders cease to be nations.
So we hope Trump builds the border wall. It might not keep everyone out, but it will serve to keep many who want to come here illegally out. That's what it's for. And it will also serve as a blazing signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. will welcome all legal immigrants with open arms, but not illegal ones.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4) In This Corner: Donald Trump’s China Trade War Is Not About Trade
Understanding the logic behind Trump’s economic and foreign policies.
The U.S.- China trade war is not a trade war in the traditional sense, nor the result of a childish impulse. Rather, it is the outgrowth of a formal foreign-policy analysis made early in Trump’s administration, which has in turn led the Administration to push back in peaceful ways against China as a “great power rival” before (in the analysts’ opinion) it gets too late. Similarly, Trump’s economic policy has its own clear logic, including emphases on areas of social justice that could well lead to bipartisan action.
This essay will summarize briefings or conversations with current or former top-level government officials and members of the White House policy team, held in a range of settings over a period of months. Whether you like Trump or hate him, and whether you agree with the Administration’s policy choices or oppose them, it is worthwhile to understand that there is, in fact, a coherent policy framework driving day-to-day events, and to understand what that framework is.
Trump’s policy team sometimes compare themselves to “a submarine.” They are trying to pursue a steady course underneath the storms of daily political and media life in Washington.
Their basic economic formula is simple: The economy is, by definition, equal to the size of the labor force times the productivity of the labor force. The Administration has been working in various ways to increase both the labor pool and its productivity, and to make sure that a fair portion of benefits from economic growth will accrue to the workers themselves.
The Administration assumes that productivity can be increased by increasing the level of business investment made for this purpose, and that a business’s decision to invest is driven by projected economic returns and confidence in the future. To increase business investment and productivity, the Administration has pursued four policy prongs: deregulation (much of which has been successfully accomplished, with more to go), tax reform (significantly achieved, with corporate rates lowered to 21%), energy reform (significantly underway, to encourage U.S. production) and infrastructure improvements (a significant opportunity for bipartisan cooperation in the coming Congress, if the Dems will allow Trump “a victory” ahead of 2020).
At the same time, the Administration is seeking to increase the size of the labor force through an increase in labor participation rates as compared to the very low levels of the Obama days. Jobs are being created through business growth and expansion, and the 2017 tax reform gave a near-term boost. However, the Administration also hopes that tax reform’s greatest benefits may still be in front of us for years to come, as companies shift their supply chains over time increasingly to favor U.S. locations, now that the tax advantage of foreign locations has been substantially reduced or eliminated.
The Administration’s policies to increase labor participation include opioid reform, prison reform and worker training — all progressive “social justice” issues which may gain bipartisan support. The Administration is also focused on ensuring that more of the one million or so legal immigrants each year have the skills the economy needs.
Trump has positioned himself as a strong friend to American workers, as symbolized by his anger over the announced GM plant closings and by the Administration’s effort to increase North American auto content and wages as NAFTA is replaced by USMCA. Expanded economic opportunity for African American and Hispanic workers is entirely consistent with this message, and is a centerpiece of Trump’s social-justice record as well.
Despite the decline in the stock market over the last month or two, the results of Trump’s economic approach must be judged a success so far. Economic growth is on track to exceed 3% this calendar year, roughly twice the growth rate as Obama’s term ended. Unemployment, at 3.7% overall, has fallen toward record lows for Americans as a whole, and for African Americans and Hispanic Americans in particular. Wages are now rising at over a 3% annualized level for the first time in many years, and anecdotes point toward worker shortages and job openings unfilled. Meanwhile, inflation remains muted, at around 2%. Reagan’s famous “misery index” measure (the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate) is near ideal.
Obama cannot rightfully take credit for Trump’s success as he tried to do during the midterm elections. The best chance for rapid economic growth comes in the initial years of recovery from a recession — not 10 years after the fact. Yet the economy never grew at 3% in any calendar year under Obama, and he oversaw the slowest post-recession economic recovery on recent record. The crash began under George W. Bush, not Obama; however, the major steps for the recovery — including TARP and loose Fed policy under Bernanke — were put in place under Bush as well. Obama’s increased regulation and his obvious distrust for the private sector (“You didn’t build that…”) were drags on both economic growth and on wages.
In foreign policy, the current administration is following a different set of policies and principles, which also have their own internal consistency (right or wrong), but which may unavoidably work against rapid economic growth in some cases. The current China “trade war” is an example of these policies, and of the potential clash between economic and foreign policy objectives.
Early in Trump’s administration, when H.R. McMaster was still National Security Advisor, a full review was made of the assumptions underlying America’s foreign policies, and a new position was reached on China. For many years, as China began to reform its economic system toward free-market economics and began to prosper, the U.S. government was highly accommodating. The expectation was that China might break some rules as it rose from poverty, but would limit its ambitions and join the world system as a cooperative, Western-style power once it gained strength. Accordingly, China was invited into the W.T.O. and similar organizations.
The Administration’s more recent analysis has determined that China will not simply become one, more mild-mannered “club member” if left unchecked. Rather, the Administration has concluded that China is seeking to surpass the U.S. as a global leader, and is promoting centralized government power as the model for the world to follow, at the expense of Western, liberal-style democracy, personal freedoms and individual rights.
Given its new assumptions, the Administration now views Chinese programs in a less benign light than in the past. For example, China’s One Belt, One Road initiative is considered a predatory program under which weak nations are tempted to accept Chinese infrastructure loans that the debtor nations cannot afford to repay, such that they will be forced to sell key assets to China (such as resource rights or port rights) and fall into vassal status to Beijing over time. Meanwhile, China’s naval buildup and construction of bases in the South China Sea is seen as a significant long-term challenge to allies in the region, and to freedom of the seas. And finally, the country’s recent history of cyberespionage and the stealing of corporate trade secrets are seen to have geopolitical importance far beyond mere corporate profits.
The Trump Administration has also determined that it is better to express U.S. opposition to this Chinese path in peaceful ways, rather than to allow the situation to go unchecked and become more dangerous over time. This pushback against China can well last for years or decades, and is taking shape in a range of ways. The U.S. is trying to step up its own alternative lending programs to China’s One Belt, One Road, and is warning borrower nations on the dangers of Chinese debtor status. U.S. Navy ships keep steaming through contested South China Sea waters and the Taiwan Strait.
In September 2018, the Justice Department ordered key Chinese state media companies to register as foreign agents. And on November 1, 2018, the Justice Department issued a press release (“Attorney General … Announces New Initiative to Combat Chinese Economic Espionage”) explaining that the DOJ — which had not charged anyone with spying for China in 2013 to 2016 — had charged three persons in 2017, and had five other cases underway in 2018 (perhaps including the Huawei prosecution which has exploded into the headlines over the past week).
All this means that the “trade war” with China is very different from the trade wars with Mexico, Canada, the EU, Japan and Korea. The latter set of disputes are, in fact, just traditional economic trade disputes with allies, centered on topics such as Canadian levies against Wisconsin dairy products. They revolve around simple matters of dollars and cents, and there is no major underlying geopolitical fracture to heal. In contrast, the China dispute is more complex and potentially intractable, and may last a long, long time.
The traditional trade disputes with Canada, Mexico et al. have felt “hotter” than normal because Trump has chosen a different negotiating path than a typical president. In traditional diplomacy, the appearance is given that all nations are essentially equal because they are all sovereign (an idea that dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and which is symbolized, for example, by the idea of one vote for each nation in the United Nations General Assembly). Meanwhile, the rules in commercial relationships outside of government are quite different: in the commercial world, the biggest customer can set the best terms.
Trump is treating commercial negotiations between nations (e.g., the price of Wisconsin cheese in Canadian supermarkets) as commercial transactions. He is negotiating the arrangements via one-to-one agreements as the largest market customer, and is willing to threaten tariffs as a way of proving relative market power between nations. If this is a game of “chicken,” then it is a game of chicken in which the U.S. (with its giant market) is driving a 16-ton tractor trailer and Canada, for example, is in a Volkswagen.
As game theory or as a commercial matter, Trump’s strategy is eminently rational and has already appeared to work, with basic trade frameworks now in place with Canada, Mexico, Korea, Japan and the E.U. At the same time, treating commercial negotiations between nations on commercial terms does not mean that sovereignty is disrespected in non-commercial contexts, such as right to self-government or the right for each nation to set its own laws and policies. If anything, Trump’s “nationalist” focus on each nation representing its own people first is the essence of equal respect for each nation’s sovereignty, at the expense of supranational bodies.
The key point is that the trade-war situation with China is extremely different from these commercial-based negotiations. Here we face a great power rivalry, not a dispute over Wisconsin cheese.
The U.S. is pushing against China for a set of non-negotiable and fundamental principles — freedom of the seas, the ending of cyberespionage, the long-term preeminence of democratic freedoms and Western values over central government control — and is relying on trade and tariffs to support a much broader message. There is no single simple “ask” short of China deciding to become a club member rather than founder of its own new global dynasty.
The pursuit of America’s foreign-policy goals is not driven by near-term economic measures, and the U.S.-China trade wars may well slow up growth for both nations. However, there is a larger goal at stake than commerce, as America peacefully pushes China to moderate its ambitions now and so avoid an even greater — even military — conflict later. For domestic political reasons, both governments will need to keep one eye out for the economic harms they create as competition unfolds. There are likely to be short-term economic treaties followed by renewed trade frictions, continuing off and on, hotter and colder, for a long time to come, in a sawtooth pattern. At the same time, China may be far more fragile than it appears, and the U.S. is also trying to stop short of cracking China’s economy — and so wounding the global economy — too severely.
The key elements of Trump’s foreign policy beyond China are too extensive to describe in this space, but appear to include the following: The Iranian government regime is seen as the center of Mideast discord, while Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arabs had been seen as the necessary counterbalance to Iran, and as a new potential ally for peace in Israel. The North Korean regime is to be managed with a carrot and stick — roughly a choice between annihilation on the one hand, and luxury beachfront hotels on the other. Putin appears to be seen as a Loki-like figure, pursuing his own devious games for his own mischievous purposes, but still not central to the long-term future of the world. And the U.S. supports NATO, but asks NATO allies to honor the financial pledges they already made.
Some critics have argued that Trump is withdrawing the U.S. from world affairs, and abdicating our global leadership. However, the better interpretation is that he is aggressively participating in global affairs, but will readily sacrifice the diplomatic courtesies of an establishment figure when he feels substance is on his side. Here, as with the economy, Trump is the polar opposite of Obama, who spoke like a global leader but withdrew the U.S. from Iraq, allowed ISIS to gain a caliphate and allowed Syria to implode, all of which created immense suffering and sent the million refugees toward Europe that have so destabilized the E.U.
Rather than being more isolationist than Obama, Trump has pushed harder against North Korea and Iran. He has placed greater sanctions on Russia and Putin than Obama did (including sanctions against oligarchs, sale of stronger arms to Ukraine, firefights by U.S. troops against attacking Russian mercenaries in the desert, and now potential withdrawal from the INF nuclear agreement premised on Russia’s violations of that agreement). Although it goes unsaid, it was Obama’s terrible record in foreign policy that helped undercut Hillary Clinton’s claims to be “the most qualified candidate ever” when she ran for president as Obama’s former Secretary of State.
The fact that there is a clear and consistent logic behind Trump’s economic, trade and foreign policies does not mean these policies are problem free. On the economic side, it feels as if far too little attention has been paid to the long-term U.S. budget deficit. And as explained in this essay, Trump’s foreign policy decisions may well override and undercut his economic ones, as may factors outside of his control, from Fed policy to energy disruptions. On trade with allies such as Canada and Mexico, U.S. victories won by game theory and bare-knuckled negotiating in the short run may lead to eventual backlash. In foreign policy, the move away from Obama’s isolationism — Trump’s “speak loudly and carry a big stick” approach — means potential faceoffs with Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and other nations who are being called to task, any of which can become more dangerous with a misstep. Yet it is hard to point to any of Trump’s major policy goals that should be sacrificed. Do we want to concede freedom of navigation in the South China Sea? Permit Iranian-backed terrorism? Accept North Korean nuclear ICBMs? Agree that NATO allies should not honor their pledges?
The message of this essay is not that Trump is always right. It is that he is not acting as the impulsive capricious child that his opponents would make him out to be, nor is he an isolationist abdicating America’s global leadership. There is hard calculation behind his actions to date. Time will tell us the results.
K.S. Bruce writes the “In This Corner” column of opinion for RealClearLife.
is thought that the only way to deal with misbehaving judges is impeachment. We read at Ballotpedia that a total of fifteen federal judges have been impeached: "Of those fifteen: eight were convicted by the Senate, four were acquitted by the Senate, and three resigned before an outcome at trial." Eight convictions over America's 230-year history might indicate that federal judges are a fairly decent lot. However, by 2003, there had been sixty-one impeachment investigations of federal judges. Here's the list.the Department of Justice's evidence that effectively links Trump to campaign finance violations after the recent release of the Cohen sentencing memo.
Dan Backer, the lawyer, told Forbes that there appears to be no evidence to corroborate the DOJ's apparent assertion of any illegality on Trump's part.Backer, a veteran campaign counsel, said it is common practice for high-profile individuals and companies to take part in these kinds of payment arrangements. He said Trump is a brand, he has carried out similar payments for years and these so-called "hush-buys" will likely continue."Brand protection is not a campaign contribution," he told the magazine.
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