On Liberty Watch

A Tim Walz appointee speaks. Link Below.

https://x.com/nickineily/status/1839302520310571174

JFB

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With the election just over 2 weeks away we are approaching peak hysteria. Each candidate claims that if the other candidate gets elected the world will come to an immediate grinding halt etc. etc. Plus both sides have their legal teams fired up and ready for combat in the event the other side wins, irrespective of the actual merits. 

Of course partisans on either side of the divide do not concern themselves with the merits of the case or with actual facts; simple assertions will do just fine, thank you very much.  And the talking heads of the commentariat, who read each others columns, are perfectly content to repeat the conventional wisdom as if they possess unique insight into the game. 

They don’t. 

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Remember back in 2016 when it Hillary Clinton had it in the bag? Or in 2022 when the Republicans would be the beneficiaries of a Big Red Wave that somehow mysteriously failed to materialize? Or that the Trump candidacy was bound to antagonize Hispanic voters? 

The ready-made excuse among the commentariat was that “the polls” were “wrong”.  This despite the fact that low quality and infrequent state polls were put in the same category as frequent and high quality national polls, which, by the way, were essentially correct about the aggregate vote, but they didn’t measure the distribution of votes across states.

This time, in a vacuous campaign most notable for its degree of personal animosity, we are once again being consumed by the horse race aspects of the campaign. This comes at the expense of missing what in retrospect will become obvious. 

First, the nation is fairly evenly divided. Which means that the winner will not have secured a mandate, though the winner will undoubtedly declare one.  Second, there are two major (and related) questions that America faces. Those questions have been largely ignored by both candidates. 

The questions are: (1a) what should America’s role in the world be? (1b) is the United States willing to pay the price of being the global hegemon that continues to enforce the post WWII Pax Americana? Or (1c) is it ready to cede the space to another power or powers? 

(2) A statement: U.S. public finance is a mess. Accumulated debt is about $35 trillion. We pay almost as much for interest on the debt as we spend on the military. Question: Is the United States willing to get its public finances in order and begin to reduce its dependence on debt finance?

Questions A and B are related because together they imply a massive shift in resources from the domestic sphere to foreign affairs. That is if the United States wishes to maintain its global hegemony. Even if not, we are rapidly approaching the point where key strategic decisions will have to be made.  The reason why is that piling up debt at a rate of 2 trillion per year as is projected (using rosy assumptions!) is simply not sustainable. 

In addition, military spending is inadequate to maintain, much less increase our capacity to enforce a 21^st century Pax Americana. Further, simply maintaining the current course implies a drastic reduction in living standards across America.

To see why consider that the vast majority of domestic spending does not contribute to economic output. Instead it represents transfer payments. Also consider that, despite the illusion to the contrary, debt finance is not free. The debt has to be paid back. The money that the federal government borrows is money that could have been used by the private sector. Which means that all that borrowing slows growth. And anybody who thinks that the government’s use of funds is more efficient than the private sector’s is, to put it mildly, dreaming. 

Meanwhile according to the latest Economic Report of the President outlays on national defense dropped from 16.35% to 13.37% of the federal budget from 2001 through 2023. At the same time outlays for spending on Health, Medicare, Income Security and Social Security combined rose from 58.6% to 63% of outlays. A lot of that is borrowed money.

Since borrowing simply represents deferred taxes, we have outstanding deferred taxes of about $35 trillion—and rising by about $2 trillion per year as far as the eye can see.  Not only is this unsustainable, both candidates are promising to either cut taxes or spend more on plans that make zero economic sense. For instance, Donald Trump says he won’t tax tips; Kamala Harris promises a $25,000 give away to first time home buyers. Neither proposal, essentially vote buying exercises, makes any economic sense. 

Donald Trump promises to increase the deduction for SALT taxes—thereby negating one of the sensible things he did in his first term. Kamala Harris means to eliminate “price gouging” through price controls, a proposal that any freshman economics student would (or should) laugh at. 

And to boot, notwithstanding the passions of the ignorati, the well being of the US economy and American living standards depend on global free trade, global Liberalism and freedom of the seas. But we have nations that are working hard at eliminating those prerequisites. 

The major players that stand in opposition are China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The only nation capable of standing up to them and enforcing a rules based global order is the United States operating in conjunction with its allies. That will require both soft and hard power. Which in turn will cost money. 

The usual dodge so beloved by politicians—which is to say that the other guy will have to pay—is no longer tenable. There will have to be a substantial reordering of the entitlement state and a significant increase in military spending for the foreseeable future. All of which implies that: entitlements have to be reformed, spending growth in general will have to be reduced with the proviso that military spending will have to rise. Further,  the US will have to readjust its strategy from conflict avoidance to one that encompasses both active and credible deterrence. In addition the US along with its allies, will have to advocate for the classically liberal values of Western Civilization instead of apologizing for them.  

That will require real and sustained American leadership. And neither presidential candidate gives the slightest indication of having what it takes. 

JFB

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Next time you hear about threats tp democracy, remember this video.

JFB

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I write this not as a partisan. Actually I have no use for either ticket, or for that matter, any of the players that constitute said tickets. I suppose that makes me a quadruple hater in that I can’t stand either ticket or any of the players on them. But because I have retained my sense of humor, I simply laugh at the truly awful arguments the candidates make for their respective “positions”. 

However I am a student of the game. And so I have studied the various (rather pathetic) machinations of the candidates as they scramble for the few remaining voters that remain to be convinced. So here is my analysis. 

Each candidate has weaknesses that would ordinarily be fatal to a candidacy. But we are not talking about A-list candidates, which is partly why no one has scored a knockout punch.  More importantly, neither candidate has a coherent, much less plausible theory of the race. As a result, each one continues to struggle gamely toward the finish line hoping against hope to somehow garner the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.   

So what exactly is the Trump theory of the race? It is that Biden is bad. That, mingled with all Trump’s grievances, is what the race is all about from the Trumpian perspective.  Not to mention that Biden committed the ultimate sin of beating him in 2020, turning Trump into what he fears the most: being publicly (and correctly) tagged as a loser. 

And so, naturally enough, he continues to deny that he lost in 2020. He might even believe it.

So let’s turn to Harris. What exactly is the Harris theory of the race? It is that Trump is bad. Combine that with the insight (which is to say none) of a San Francisco progressive in a one party state and you have the Harris campaign. 

This should not be taken as a criticism of the campaign managers. Trump for instance, has real professionals advising him. He just ignores them. I mean how hard can it be to focus on the issues the voters care about in survey after survey? Immigration, the state of the economy, crime.   Last I checked, Haitian immigrants eating pets was not at the top of the list. Neither was crowd size at rallies. 

Well let’s take a look at the Harris campaign. She too has pretty smart advisors. Her problem is that she listened to them, probably out of necessity. And so she is running a repeat of the Biden basement campaign. The underlying idea is that if she can keep away from a turned-on microphone or camera where she has to say something substantive, she may be able to hold on until election day, counting on Trump to deliver a generic Democratic victory.  

And therein lies the rub. Harris is utterly incapable of saying anything even remotely sensible unless it is already on a teleprompter in a controlled environment. Even when she is being questioned by friendlies in one of her infrequent interviews every answer quickly turns into a meaningless word salad. And the public is beginning to notice. (Not that Trump is coherent, but he is speaking to a different audience.)

So where does that leave us? According to the conventional wisdom, 7 battleground states will determine the winner. In the west we have Arizona and Nevada; In the South are  Georgia and North Carolina, and in the “Blue Wall” Midwest we have Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

Election analysts and pollsters are busy trying to guess which states will wind up in which column after all the votes are counted. But maybe they are asking the wrong question. The right question to ask may not be about individual states. The right question may be: to what extent are the votes in those battleground states likely to be correlated? To the extent that the battleground states have voters whose preferences are highly correlated, the ultimate winner may win anywhere from 5 to 7 of the contested states. That would make the contest much less of a nail biter come election day.     

So what would be the factor that would account for the potential correlation of the voters, especially from different sections of the country? The underlying issue is whose judgement do the voters trust, or better yet, whose judgement do they distrust the least? 

Kamala Harris faces several difficulties here. First, she is the sitting Vice President. The last time a sitting Vice-President won the White House was  in 1988 when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis. Before Bush, the last sitting VP to be elected President was Martin Van Buren back in 1836. Also take note: Bush served as VP under Ronald Reagan, who was very popular. Unlike Joe Biden. 

The second difficulty Harris faces is that in order to win she has to hold together a fractious coalition whose members face each other with daggers drawn. Democratic elites are becoming progressively less enamored with Israel’s conduct of its war against Iran and its acolytes.  This is especially dangerous for Harris because it will make it extremely difficult for her to carry both Pennsylvania and Michigan, which are Blue Wall states, and vital to her chances. (Dearborn Michigan has the largest  Muslim population in the U.S., and that population, normally Democratic, has vociferously attacked the Biden Administration over its handing of the Israeli — Gaza war.)

The third difficulty Harris faces is that the votes of the Blue Wall states may be highly correlated—and correlated with other battleground states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are 75% – 80% white. They are slightly older than the nation as a whole. Most importantly, whites without college degrees cast about ⅗ of the votes in Wisconsin and about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And whites without a college degree are a core constituency of the modern Trumpified GOP. Especially men without a college degree.

Finally, Harris has to make the argument that she represents change. And to do that she must create a sense of trust with the voters. This, she has conspicuously failed to do. In fact, it may be the fatal flaw of the Basement Campaign strategy.  How do you develop a bond of trust with the voters when you are hiding from them? In the end the voters are liable to decide to go with “the devil you know”. They know Trump; they don’t know Harris. So when the late deciders begin to break, which should be about now, my guess is that they will go with Trump. And send him to the White House. Again.

Just for the record. I am not rooting for either one of them. I have already voted for Nikki Haley. 

JFB

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The Battle of the Idiots continues. In it, Kamala Harris has her second sit down interview with a reporter since she secured the Democratic nomination. It is, on Kamala Harris’s part, a cliché fest. A truly cringeworthy event. See below.

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Hands down, in Philadelphia’s presidential debate sponsored by ABC News, former President Donald Trump emerged as the clear loser. Serves him right. As usual he lied throughout the event, fell into the numerous traps Harris laid out for him, failed to challenge Harris’s share of whoppers and didn’t press her on her remarkably convenient set of implied policy changes. 

He didn’t ask why the sudden change of heart on fracking.   Nor did he point out that in 2019 she opposed allowing citizens to purchase private health insurance. He didn’t call her out on her support for using taxpayer dollars to fund trans surgeries for migrant inmates. He also allowed her to dodge the question of whether she would support any restrictions on abortion. And not to put too fine a point on Trump’s strategic incompetence, he actually allowed Harris to put him on the defensive over our chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.   

The list of missed opportunities is almost endless. Instead of things that matter, Trump wallowed in his personal grievances, and produced the usual lies and wild exaggerations. And speaking of wild hyperbole, we learned that Trump is concerned that (illegal?) immigrants in Ohio are eating citizens’ pets. And that crime everywhere is the world is down except here in the United States where it continues to rise, presumably because other countries send their criminals to America to ply their trade. 

A time-series chart produced by the data firm Statista shows what nonsense this is. (See below). The U.S. does have a much higher murder rate than Europe, for instance. But it has been much higher than Europe’s rate for at least 20 years. And—wait for it—when did the US rate explode to the upside? That would be around 2019—well before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and when none other than Donald Trump was president. Hmm. 

But let’s not go down a rabbit hole while trying to illustrate the obvious, namely that Donald Trump is a serial liar. Strategically speaking the important question to ask is this: was Trump just making up stuff as he went along or was he actually trying to accomplish something?   Well, if his goal was to remind educated voters what they don’t like about him (actually why they detest him) he can claim the night was a stunning success. 

But does it matter? Will it have any impact on the election results? That is really hard to say. I am reminded of the time in the early 1970s that Henry Kissinger asked Chinese premiere Zhou Enlai whether he thought the French Revolution was a success. “Too early to say” Zhou reportedly replied. And so it is with the schoolyard brawl we call a debate. 

By all accounts the number of people who have not made up their minds about either of the two major party candidates is vanishingly small. The majority opinion among the electorate seems to be disgust, which is a testament to the good sense of the voting public. It is unlikely that partisans of either side will be persuaded to change their opinions. The vote of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is not in doubt. 

What really matters is the impact on what we charitably call low information voters. Trump appears to have an edge in these voters. They tend to show up in presidential election years, but not off years. So the question is: in what numbers do they show up to vote? And where do they show up? If they turnout in large numbers in rural areas, they would advantage Trump. If, on the other hand, Trump succeeded in losing more suburban women (a real possibility) or if Kamala Harris’s demeanor was reassuring to the remaining small contingent of undecided voters, then it would be advantage Harris. 

The Trump campaign is (predictably and with some justification) already whining about how the moderators treated their man. But when you complain about the ref, it means you are losing the game and you know it. 

The net of it is that in terms of style Harris won the debate, walking away.  In terms of substance—there wasn’t any to speak of. No surprise there. But keep in mind that polling indicates an extraordinarily tight race. A few thousand votes could matter in swing states. Will the debate change enough votes, or increase turnout on the margin where it matters? As Zhou Enlai said, It’s too early to tell. 

JFB

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It has been over a month since Vice-President Kamala Harris became the presumptive and then the actual Democratic nominee for President. During all that time she has not had a single press conference or  sit-down interview with a bona fide journalist. Just recently, her campaign announced that she has (finally) scheduled an interview for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, with CNN. The interview will be aired this Thursday evening.  The questioner will be the network’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash. 

Herewith are some questions Ms Bash could profitably ask the Vice-President and her running mate. 

1. Up until the moment that President Joe Biden was effectively forced off the ticket, you defended him against the charge that his mental acuity was rapidly declining. Do you now regret doing so? If not, why not? Do you maintain that Mr Biden still has what it takes to do the job for another 4 years? If he is incapacitated, should Mr Biden resign now?
2. Your running mate Governor Walz has said just recently that the First amendment does not protect either “hate speech” or “misinformation”. Do you agree with him? If you agree, what steps would you take to restrict speech with which you disagree? If you restrict speech, how would you respond to the legal challenges that are sure to come?
3. Before you dropped out of the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination you said you wanted to ban fracking. Recently a campaign spokesman said you were no longer in favor of such a ban. Which is it? Are you in favor of a ban or not? If you are no longer in favor of a ban, what prompted you to change your mind?
4. Just recently, in the face of near universal disparagement by economists across the ideological spectrum, you suggested that your administration would impose price controls on groceries if prices were deemed “excessive”. What makes you think that a government agency is capable of determining the “correct” price for groceries, or anything else for that matter? How would you avoid creating shortages of basic commodities? Can you name a single country in the world where price controls have actually worked?  What makes you think that they would work this time, after such a record of failure?   
5. Turning to foreign policy: it is now reliably reported that Al Qaede, the terrorist organization,  is operating in Afghanistan. In light of that, would you still call the Biden administration’s decision to abandon our military presence there a success? The Taliban has imposed strict Sharia law in Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world where girls are forbidden to attend school after the primary grades. The U.S. is the largest donor of aid to Afghanistan, with the UN shipping about $2.6 billion from the US since the collapse of the government after the US withdrawal. Would a Harris Administration continue with this funding? If so, why?
6. It has been about 2.5 years since Russia launched its war of aggression against Ukraine. The US has resisted the Russian invasion by being the largest supplier of armaments to Kiev. But the US has never explained its strategy or its goals to the American people. Since you are Vice President my question is: Why not? What goal would the Harris Administration seek and what strategy would the Harris Administration implement to achieve the goal? How would the Harris Administration define success in achieving the goal? 
7. Turning to the Middle East: On October 7, Hamas launched a savage surprise attack on Israel. According to polling, something like 70% of Gazan residents are sympathetic with Hamas. Would you continue the Biden Administration’s policies with respect to Israel and Gaza? If not how would a Harris Administration differ from the Biden Administration? 
8. Turning toward Asia: China has become increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea and beyond, going so far as to have the Chinese military violate Japanese air space with fighter jets; China has also attacked Philippine fishing vessels with water canons. China, along with North Korea and Iran have continued to supply Russia with war materiel, in support of Russia’s war against Ukraine. What defense policy approach would a Harris Administration adopt vis-a-vis China? Would it be materially different from the Biden Administration’s approach? 
9. Iran, Russia, North Korea and China all appear to be cooperating to act against Western interests. Are they? If so what, if anything, does a Harris Administration intend to do about it? In 2020 then Senator Harris said “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need.” In light of all the threats the US and its western allies face, do you still want to reduce the defense budget?
10. (10)Depending on how you measure it, the US has accumulated about $35 trillion in debt obligations through bond sales, or about 100% of GDP.  The largest drivers of the debt are Social Security and Medicare. Left alone the Social Security Trust fund will run out in the mid 2030s necessitating a drastic reduction in benefits. How would a Harris Administration address this problem?
11. JFB

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