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Common Sense free trade & free markets government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Never Trust a Politician

salt, lies, politicians, politics, Donald Trump, truth, economy, trade

One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies.

For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording.

The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was the idea that I was relying upon belief in Donald Trump’s veracity. The whole point of my commentary regarding Trump’s handling of trade and foreign policy was to read between some lines.

I try never to believe anything . . . er, everything . . . any politician says.

In Donald Trump’s case, though, there are lies and there are fictions and there are exaggerations. And corkers . . . and “negotiating gambits.” Separating the wheat from the chaff from the grindstone is not always easy.

Based not only on some of what he says, but also on results-thus-far from the EU negotiations, Trump’s idea of “fair trade” appears to be multilateral free trade. But he has chosen a bizarre method to get there: the threat of high-tariff protectionism — which in the past has led to multilateral protectionism, not free trade.

Trump sees everything as a contest. Trade isn’t a contest as such. It’s win-win. But trade negotiations are contests. And Trump’s game of chicken is dangerous.

Regarding foreign policy generally, though, he seems to be playing a more familiar game: we can outspend everybody. The recent increase in Pentagon spending is bigger than Russia’s annual military budget!

So, who pays? Americans in

  1. higher taxes and 
  2. the consequences of massive debt, as well as in
  3. the higher prices from his tariffs.

That’s awfully daring of him. For us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo from Max Pixel

 

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free trade & free markets government transparency media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Most Outrageous Negotiation Strategy Yet

Trump cards, Donald Trump, The Madman Theory, strategy, negotiation, deal, trade, tariffs, trade war

The best defense of Donald Trump’s presidency, so far? He is smarter than the rest of us, and knows how to negotiate with bad guys and insider players. We have to discount what he is saying, the theory goes, because he is not telling truths . . . obviously. 

He is negotiating.

Take nothing at face value, including Trump’s professed beliefs.

Protectionism, for example. Trump has long been against NAFTA and the modern version of “free trade.”* But, as I noted in late July, Trump does not seem to be demanding managed trade, or high tariffs as a means to protect American producers, or even tariffs as a means to increase government revenue. He appears — at least some of the time — to be using tariffs as a way to bargain other countries to reduce their tariffs.

This method has not worked in the past.

But is Trump different enough a politician to pull off a “madman” strategy to get leaders in other countries to do the right thing and reduce their tariff and regulatory burdens on their own countries?

A long shot — and several sectors of American business are being hurt right now in this “negotiating” (threat) phase of Trump’s outrageous gambit.

Another area where one might express such hope for a master-negotiator president is in reining back the Pentagon. In the run-up to November 2016, Trump sure seemed defiant of the neo-conservative/neo-“liberal”/center-left establishment on foreign policy.

But now he just signed a huge increase in the Pentagon budget: an $82 billion increase.

Is Trump’s plan to bring big-spending military-industrial complex lobbyists to heal by first giving them what they want?

That. Won’t. Work. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Post-WWII trade policy has consistently defended treaty-based global trade, but with heavy elements of protective tariffs, regulations and subsidies, making the whole thing look less like Free Trade and more like Mis-Managed Trade.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Driven to Sanity

Washington Post, economics, economy, control, government, limited

Having the federal government centrally plan the economy is “a huge waste of everyone’s time and resources” states an amazingly common-sensical Washington Post editorial.

“In a well-functioning modern economy, businesses are generally free to buy and sell the things they need, absent a compelling public need for government intervention,” the editors further expound.

Hmmm, a capitol-town rag that regularly extols the virtues of big government regulation of everything now notices the importance of freedom.

Of avoiding, especially, a system where bureaucrats and other government bullies micromanage commerce.

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,” Thomas Jefferson wrote long ago, “we should all want for bread.”

And aluminum.

“Worse,” the Post argues, the system “also politicizes — and, indeed, corrupts — economic life. Companies that feel threatened by any particular tariff exclusion request have the right to present their objections to the Commerce Department, meaning that each decision represents a high-stakes competition for federal favor between at least two companies with every incentive to influence it through lobbying, campaign contributions, you name it.”

Correct. It seems we may have Donald Trump to thank for opening the Post’s eyes. 

“[T]he way to get ahead in Mr. Trump’s economy,” those editors conclude, “is not making better products for the people, but making better connections in Washington.”

Tragically true.

But, sadly, true long before Mr. Trump entered the White House. No new powers have been given to Trump. 

Let’s drain the stinking Washington swamp. Let’s end the corrupting influence of a regulatory state run amok. Let’s limit the power of the people wielding political power.

How?

Free the markets!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people

The Opposite of Infowars

Alex Jones, InfoWars, censorship, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,

Yesterday’s big story? Several major social media platforms have de-platformed Alex Jones and his Infowars opinion (“information”?) show. 

Most commenters about this happening hasten to signal to their audiences that they do not approve of Alex Jones. Is this really necessary? When we consider a mass de-platforming event, do we need to belabor the obvious? 

I hazard that even most of Jones’s viewers and listeners agree with a small amount of what he says. Jones is more like Jon Stewart and Cenk Uygur, a performer whose rants entertain most of all. In his case, because he says things no one else will, Infowars makes for a bracing . . . alternative.

It should also go without saying that private platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Apple, who are the main players to kick Jones to the curb of the Information Super-Highway, have the right to include or exclude anyone they want. As Robby Soave at Reason put it, these “companies are under no obligation to provide a platform to Sandy Hook conspiracy theorizing, 9/11 trutherism, or any of the other insane ideas Jones has propagated.”

But Soave does worry about the goofy rationales provided for the exclusion.

As do I. And it is not just that the proffered reason, “hate speech,” is, as Soave explains, vague, unanchored to any offered specific offenses.

But it’s worse. This whole exclusionary move is not about hate speech. Everyone knows this.

It’s about suppressing ideas that are (a) popular and (b) despised by the dominant culture.

And these insiders seem at a loss to confront Jones’s farragoes with better ideas, failing to provide “counter info” in their war on Infowars. 

They strike below the belt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

May Trigger Eye Rolling

microaggressions, trigger warning, free speech, First Amendment, freedom,

The fashionable campus notion of “microaggressions” blurs the distinction between peaceful speech (offensive or not) and bashing somebody over the head with a club. 

If courts, police and/or university officials can rationalize regarding the perpetrator of a so-called “microaggression” as initiating force against an offended listener, they can also rationalize using actual physical force in retaliation. Which, to the extent implemented, would mean the end of freedom of speech. 

After all, nobody needs a First Amendment in order to utter banal pronouncements about the weather.

The allied campaign urging or requiring professors to issue “trigger warnings” before discussing anything that might provoke discomfort also dampens discourse. 

Who can object to letting viewers of TV news know that they are about to see a corpse? Or sending little kids out of the room when certain subjects are discussed? But is such common sense the point of “trigger warnings”?

At best, “trigger warnings” are a silly name for referring to what nobody seeks to keep secret. At worst, they help trigger distress themselves — or impede frank discussion of controversial subjects. The latter treats adults as if they were not adults; the former makes adults less adult. 

If and when “trigger warnings” are imposed by force, with penalties for omitting them, they also endanger freedom of speech.

Advocates of open discourse seem to be in an endless war with champions of a repressive political correctitude. The jabberwocky used to justify that repression keep evolving. The response must be constant: intellectual clarity and eternal vigilance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Transcendent Gray Lady

New York Times, The Terror, doxing, firing, racism, double standard

How far are we away from a completely vindictive, murderous madness like The Terror of revolutionary France?

I know, almost no one is talking of guillotines. 

But a lot of people seem determined to destroy others’ lives publicly. We are all too familiar with Twitterstorms where worked-up outrage forces someone out of a job or a deal  — usually for making jokes.

But it’s not just jokes. Not long ago an actor got in trouble for Tweeting that commentator and Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro seems a nice, honest person on the right that a leftist might listen to. The actor was forced to recant, and then Shapiro himself publicly recanted from some past putatively “dumb” things he “did” or “said.” Or something.

Since we’re talking about Mr. Shapiro, his commentary on the Sarah Jeong case is not irrelevant. The New York Times hired Ms. Jeong despite her past racist tweets. 

Well, racist-against-whites. 

“By the rules of the left,” says Shapiro, “this person should now be excised from polite society.”

But the Times is keeping her.

Shapiro finds this “indicative” of more than just the Times. The left at large seems OK with anti-white racism but not anti-any-other-race.

It’s indicative of a lot more, though, not just racism and anti-racism and anti-anti-racism. 

Outrage and the Twittermob may be fun. But it’s time to stop.

Is the Times leading the way?

Only when the decrepit old rag defends someone not on its own ideological side. Transcending partisan mob mania means first transcending partisanship. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Dbl Standard Destruction Co.

Trump, border, wall, build, t-shirt, Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co., Addison Barnes, Oregon

Addison Barnes has just won a court case against Liberty High School of Hillsboro, Oregon. The court ruled that the school acted wrongfully when, early this year, it suspended him for wearing a “disruptive” T-shirt heralding a “Donald J. Trump Border Wall Construction Co.” 

Addison was awarded $25,000 for legal expenses, and the school has apologized to him, sort of, for the suspension.

“I brought this case to stand up for myself and other students who might be afraid to express their right-of-center views,” Addison says. “Everyone knows that if a student wears an anti-Trump shirt to school, the teachers won’t think twice about it. But when I wore a pro-Trump shirt, I got suspended. That’s not right.”

No, it’s not.

The outcome is imperfect. The apology offered by Liberty High does not acknowledge the glaring injustice of the suspension. It simply asserts that the school got the “balancing act” wrong between making students feel welcome and making them feel safe. (Because it is “unsafe” per se for kids to peacefully express political disagreements?) Nor was the teacher who imposed the suspension obliged to apologize personally.

Ideally, all schools would be privately owned, privately run. Then they could openly promulgate whatever silly policies they wished about what students may display on T-shirts, if anything. Market pressures would tend to discourage indefensible rules. 

But today’s schooling system is not ideal.

Have you noticed?

Meantime, let’s hope that the court’s decision will discourage other schools from imposing similar double standards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard responsibility

Blame the App?

WhatsApp, India, murder, responsibility, cause, effect, law, ban, blame

Who spreads “fake news”?

Gossips, politicians, publicity agents, Twitter eggs, partisan bloggers, lying news journalists?

Or . . . the medium of communication they use?

Do envelopes, stationery, telephones, email, and messaging apps have moral agency?

And who commits the crimes that news (true or false) is used to rationalize?

A New York Times story discusses “How WhatsApp Leads Mobs to Murder in India,” which is like saying that civilization, flying lessons and boarding passes “led” terrorists to 9/11.

The Times reports that fake news about children being kidnapped — dramatized by doctored video clips and forwarded via WhatsApp, a messaging app — provoked anger and fear in many Indians. Some were then willing to attack anyone who “seemed” about to kidnap children.

In recent months, dozens of people have been murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Without social media and the mega-popular WhatsApp, the murders probably would not have happened, at least not the way they happened. That seems certain. But this doesn’t mean that without WhatsApp, nobody in India would spread false stories or assault innocent people.

Mob violence in the country antedates the Internet.

Perhaps a thousand material circumstances directly or indirectly enable any particular act of wrongdoing. But no such prerequisites “lead to” anything without individual choices.

If someone pretends it’s okay to kill innocent persons — or persons whose guilt or innocence he doesn’t care to know — he, the killer, is the guilty party. The telecommunications network or messenger app used to provide grist for excuse-making is innocent.

Apps don’t murder people. People murder people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility

Not Fine with Feinstein?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, election, candidate, California, Democratic Party, money, campaign

Could it be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, may not be liberal enough?

The San Francisco Democrat has ostensibly represented the Golden State in the United States Senate for the last 26 years. Before that, Feinstein spent eight years on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and then a decade as mayor.

Now, after 44 consecutive years as a public official, what does the 85-year-old Feinstein seek? More. That is, another six-year lease on her powerful perch in the U.S. Senate.

But the Executive Board of the California Democratic Party — Feinstein’s Party — just said, “No way!”

A whopping 65 percent of the 333-member board opted for State Sen. Kevin de León, a fellow Democrat seen as more “progressive.” Only seven percent supported endorsing Feinstein.

Keep in mind that Feinstein is already on the November ballot. She was the leading vote-getter in California’s primary last month. Yet, she received only 44 percent of the vote: a majority does favor someone else.

In February, 2,700 activists at the State Democratic Party Convention in San Diego voted 54 to 37 percent for State Sen. De León over U.S. Sen. Feinstein.

“Feinstein, who spends much of her time in Washington, has had a distant relationship with party activists for years,” noted the Los Angeles Times report.

Still, what Democratic Party activists want may not matter so much. Mrs. Feinstein enjoys tremendous name recognition and, according to the Times, has “$7 million in campaign cash socked away as of May, ten times what De León had.”

That money seems to be Sen. Feinstein’s real base of support.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility

The Deeply State

FBI agent Peter Strzok, girlfriend Lisa Page, congressional interrogation, testimony, Trump, threat

FBI agent Peter Strzok is offended.

Deeply.

He takes pains to clarify: he sent emails during the last presidential campaign expressing a willingness and readiness and commitment to preventing a Trump Presidency because he, Agent Strzok, is patriotic.

Deeply.

During yesterday’s contentious congressional interrogation, fielding questions regarding just how anti-Trump he was during the last presidential campaign, Peter Strzok denied that his obvious and admitted political bias affected his professional conduct.

“Like many people, I had and expressed personal political opinions during an extraordinary presidential election,” said Agent Strzok. “My opinions were expressed out of deep patriotism.”

But it wasn’t just a matter of expression, was it? One text message was an assurance that he would “stop” Trump’s election. When challenged on this, Strzok admitted that his memory was faulty.

Deeply?

“At no time, in any text,” Strzok said, decisively, “did those personal beliefs enter into the realm of any action I took.”

When a citizen expresses a credible threat to a president, federal agents investigate. His exchange with his “girlfriend,” Lisa Page, was not what we now call an “existential threat,” of course. Ms. Page had texted her worry about a Trump win: the man was “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok’s reply was not vague: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” The threat is, at most, covert-political, back-room. FBI-ish. The couple were, after all, a part of an investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged Russian connection.

Though one could easily understand a married man assuring his inamorata simply to puff himself up in her eyes, this assurance sure looks different to our eyes — it cannot help but make us suspicious.

Deeply.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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