The Laws of Economics Cannot Be Wished Away

In areas such as rent control and minimum wage laws there’s an increasing tendency to ignore the basic laws of economics, and hope they somehow don’t apply to the policy being considered.

President Trump provided another example in this recent tweet:

 

There are multiple errors here. The first sentence is incorrect; the yuan was much lower when I first visited Beijing in 1994. The second sentence is also incorrect, for two different reasons. Currency manipulation is defined as artificially depreciating a currency to create a current account surplus. China’s current account is roughly balanced, and the depreciation reflected market forces. So there is no currency manipulation, no “major violation” of any agreement.

Econ 101 on Currency Depreciation

One irony here is that it is President Trump’s policies that have caused the yuan to depreciate, as is explained in any principles of economics textbook. When country A puts tariffs on the exports of country B, the currency of country A will appreciate and the currency of country B will depreciate. This is ECON 101.

In a world with more than two countries, there will be additional effects. China’s currency depreciation will push it to sell more goods to third parties, such as Europe. That will cause depreciation of the euro—another issue that Trump has complained about. Because the dollar would be expected to appreciate against almost all currencies, the US will buy more goods from third parties.

Textbooks also teach us that tariffs will not improve the trade balance, which depends on saving/investment imbalances. Textbooks also tell us that a major fiscal stimulus will cause the trade deficit to get larger. And that’s exactly what has happened, the trade deficit has become even “worse” over the past two years in response to Trump’s enormous fiscal deficits.

Trump’s reference to the Fed is an allusion to his earlier plea that the Fed manipulate the dollar lower. It’s not clear why he would want the Fed to do that, as in the final sentence he says that currency manipulation will weaken China over time. So why encourage the Fed to manipulate the dollar? Wouldn’t that also weaken America over time?

Here’s King Canute:

This article is republished with permission from the Library of Economics and Liberty.

Scott Sumner

Scott B. Sumner is the director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center and a professor at Bentley University. He blogs at the Money Illusion and Econlog.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Trump’s Tariffs Cost Americans $19 Billion in 2018

“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” President Trump tweeted last March as his administration began to impose higher tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Economists Warn Against Protectionism

At the time, the University of Chicago polled dozens of America’s top economists on the subject, asking if they believed the tariffs would make Americans better off. Not a single one agreed they would.

Notwithstanding the warnings of economists, the Trump administration continued to raise tariffs on imported goods throughout the duration of 2018, such that some $280 billion of imports were hit with tariff rates ranging between 10 and 50 percent.

In response to America’s move toward protectionist trade policy, countries such as Russia, China, Mexico, and the European Union have imposed retaliatory tariffs on $121 billion worth of US exports.

A year after Trump’s tweet about the ease with which trade wars could be won, economists from Princeton, Columbia, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have released an analysis of how Trump’s trade policies have impacted Americans, and the results so far aren’t promising.

American Consumers Pay Tariffs

In addition to the economic toll of the trade war the tariffs caused, they find that the full cost of the tariffs was passed on to US consumers, meaning the tariff hike was effectively a tax hike on all Americans. On top of that, in response to facing less international competition, American businesses have increased their prices.

The economists estimate that Americans were left about $7 billion poorer because of the economic consequences of the tariffs, and they also paid $12 billion more in taxes to the government. Ironically enough, the Trump administration is issuing up to $12 billion in payments to farmers who have been hurt by the trade war.

Essentially, Trump’s tariffs started a trade war, made Americans poorer, and caused them to pay more in taxes, and this new tax revenue may not even offset the costs of “bailout” payments to farmers harmed by the trade war. Genius.

One can only hope that one day, the clear historical record of failure it has produced will lead to protectionism being discarded into the ash heap of history.

Being Classically Liberal

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This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

 

 

Why Trump’s Proposal to Lower Drug Prices Is Bad Economics

President Trump often rails against foreign trade partners such as China that treat the US unfairly. These complaints sometimes have merit, as foreign governments often cheat and abuse US firms, which is why it’s odd that his administration is now seeking to perpetuate many of the same abuses on US-based pharmaceutical companies.

Government Intervention Distorts the Market

It’s well-known that prescription drug prices are typically higher in the US than many other nations. That’s both because bad domestic policies restrict the kind of competition that would keep prices in check and the fact that many foreign governments enact price controls while threatening to steal patents from companies that don’t cooperate.

So, it’s especially troubling to see a proposed rule from the Trump administration that would index prescription drug reimbursements under Medicare Part B—which covers drugs exclusively handled by physicians and hospitals like vaccines and cancer medications—based on the prices paid in other countries, including those with nationalized health care systems. To borrow a legal metaphor, it’s fruit of the poisonous tree.

Promising to lower the prices of prescription drugs is likely good electoral politics, but the way the administration aims to go about it is simply bad economics.

A Big Step in the Wrong Direction

At stake aren’t just high-minded free-market principles but the vitality of the most innovative pharmaceutical market in the world. US drug companies have only weathered the abuses of foreign governments because the domestic market is large enough that they can recoup the losses. That’s why the president is right to call it “very, very unfair” for other countries to keep their prices artificially low at the expense of American patients; but importing those losses by allowing foreign abuses to set US prices will mean no more market in which to offset losses to socialized systems and thus an inevitable decline in research and development of new medications.

Nor have other governments managed to avoid other downsides of their price controls. Because they seek to keep costs down the wrong way, new, life-saving drugs often take longer to reach their shores, and their patients are more likely to encounter shortages. From rent control to the gasoline lines of the 1970s, the connection between price controls and shortages has been well established.

To be fair, the administration’s proposal is not a full-throated embrace of government control of healthcare, as it applies only to certain types of drugs for a subset of patients. But it’s part of a program created by Obamacare that focuses on small experiments with the eventual goal of implementing them more broadly. So, it’s a big step in the wrong direction.

Medicare Part B is not a market-based system now. But rather than providing reforms that address the disease of a system overwhelmed by government mandates and distorted incentives rather than just the symptoms, President Trump’s proposed rule threatens to throw gasoline on the fire.

Source: Why Trump’s Proposal to Lower Drug Prices Is Bad Economics - Foundation for Economic Education

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Why Is Trump Waging War on the Freedom Caucus?

Why Is Trump Waging War on the Freedom Caucus?

Why is Trump attacking the House Freedom Caucus? He has tweeted that “we must fight them.”

My first thought: this is inevitable. Destiny is unfolding before our eyes!

There is the obvious fact that the Freedom Caucus was the reason the GOP’s so-called replacement for Obamacare went down to defeat. They fought it for a solid reason: it would not have reduced premiums or deductibles, and it would not have increased access to a greater degree of choice in the health-insurance market.

These people knew this. How? Because there was not one word of that bill that enabled the health care industry to become more competitive. Competition is the standard by which reform must be judged. The core problem of Obamacare (among many) was that it froze the market in an artificial form and insulated it from competitive forces.

At minimum, any reform must unfreeze the market. The proposed reform did not do that.

Bad Reform

That means the reform would not have been good for the American people. It would not have been good for the Republican Party. And then the chance for real reform – long promised by many people in the party – would have been gone.

Trump latched on to the proposal without understanding it. Or, other theories: he doesn’t care, he actually does favor universal coverage even if it is terrible, or he just wanted some pyrrhic victory even if it did nothing to improve the access.

The Freedom Caucus killed it. And I’m trying to think back in political history here, is there another time since World War Two that a pro-freedom faction of the Republican Party killed a bill pushed by the majority that pertained to such a large sector and dealt with such a hugely important program?

I can’t think of one.

What this signifies is extremely important. We might be seeing the emergence of a classically liberal faction within the GOP, one that is self consciously driven by an agenda that is centered on a clear goal: getting us closer to an ideal of a free society. The Caucus isn’t fully formed yet in an ideological sense, but its agenda is becoming less blurry by the day. (And please don't call them the "hard right wing.") 

The old GOP coalition included nationalists, militarists, free enterprisers, and social conservatives. The Trump takeover has strained it to the breaking point. Now the genuine believers in freedom are gaining a better understanding of themselves and what they must do.

For the first times in our lives! Even in our parents’ and grandparents’ lives!

The Larger Picture

Trump is obviously not a student of history or political philosophy, but he does embody a strain of thinking with a history that traces back in time. I discussed this in some detail here, here, and here, among many other places. The tradition of thought he inhabits stands in radical opposition to the liberal tradition. It always has. We just remain rather ignorant of this fact because the fascist tradition of thought has been dormant for many decades, and so is strangely unfamiliar to this generation of political observers.

So let us be clear: this manner of thinking that celebrates the nation-state, believes in great collectives on the move, panics about the demographic genocide of a race, rails against the “other” invading our shores, puts all hope in a powerful executive, and otherwise believes not in freedom but rather in compliance, loyalty, and hero worship – this manner of thinking has always and everywhere included liberals (or libertarians) as part of the enemy to be destroyed.

And why is this? Liberalism to them represents “rootless cosmopolitanism,” in the old Nazi phrase. They are willing to do business with anyone, move anywhere, and imagine that the good life of peace and prosperity is more than enough to aspire to in order to achieve the best of all possible worlds. They don’t believe that war is ennobling and heroic, but rather bloody and destructive. They are in awe of the creation of wealth out of simple exchanges and small innovations. They are champions of the old bourgeois spirit.

To the liberal mind, the goal of life is to live well in peace and experience social and financial gain, with ever more alleviation of life’s pains and sufferings. Here is magic. Here is beauty. Here is true heroism.

The alt-right mind will have none of this. They want the clash, the war, the struggle against the enemy, big theaters of epic battles that pit great collectives against each other. If you want a hilarious caricature of this life outlook, no one does it better than Roderick Spode.

Natural Enemies

This is why these two groups can never get along politically. They desire different things. It has always and everywhere been true that when the strongmen of the right-Hegelian mindset gain control, they target the liberals for destruction. Liberals become the enemy that must be crushed.

And so it is that a mere few months into the presidency of this odd figure that the Freedom Caucus has emerged as a leading opposition. They will back him where they can but will otherwise adhere to the great principle of freedom. When their interests diverge, the Freedom Caucus will go the other way. It is not loyalty but freedom that drives them. It is not party but principle that makes them do what they do.

To any aspiring despot, such views are intolerable, as bad as the reliable left-wing opposition.

Listen, I’m all for working with anyone to achieve freedom. When Trump is right (as he is on environmental regulation, capital gains taxes, and some other issues), he deserves to be backed. When he is wrong, he deserves to be opposed. This is not about partisanship. It is about obtaining freer lives.

But let us not languish in naïvete. The mindset of the right-wing Hegelian is not at all the same as a descendant of the legacy of Adam Smith. They know it. We need to know it too.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Trump’s Budget Paves the Road to Fiscal Failure

Trump's Budget Paves the Road to Fiscal Failure

President Donald Trump has issued his preliminary federal budget proposal looking to the U.S. government’s next fiscal year. What it shows is that there will likely be no attempt to reduce the size and cost of most of the American interventionist-welfare state.

On Thursday, March 16, 2017, the White House released, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” Listening to the comments of some on the political left, you would think that the world was going to come to an end. For many on the political right, the programs placed on the chopping block for reduction or near elimination seem like a dream come true–if the budgetary proposals were to be implemented.

Furthermore, the blueprint offers an insight into the mind of Donald Trump about the role of government in society. When the budget was released, Michael Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that this was Donald Trump’s fiscal vision for America. "If he said it on the campaign, it's in the budget," Mulvaney declared. "We wrote it using the president's own words."

Same Entitlements, More Defense Spending

Even a cursory look at President Trump’s budgetary proposals reveals that he plans to leave “entitlement programs” untouched while reallocating approximately 30 percent of the federal budget’s “discretionary” expenditures from one set of activities to another. Neither the total amount of government spending nor the likely budget deficit is threatened with meaningful reduction.

In the current 2017 federal fiscal year, Social Security, Medicare, and related spending make up almost 64 percent of Uncle Sam’s expenditures. The net interest on the near $20 trillion national debt makes up another 7 percent of federal spending. Out of the remaining around 30 percent of the budget, defense spending absorbs 15 percent of federal outflows.

The budget proposal makes it clear that President Trump is devoted to expanding military capabilities for continued foreign intervention. A foreign policy focused on “America First” is losing none of its global reach or the military hardware to back it up.

During his March 17 press conference with visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, Donald Trump reiterated that he was not a foreign policy isolationist. Indeed, he emphasized his allegiance to NATO and its role in Europe. At the same time, Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was at the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea, declaring that nothing was off the table, including a preemptive military attack on North Korea’s nuclear capability.

For conservatives and classical liberals who hope for foreign policy that leaves the United States less vulnerable to regional foreign conflicts, President Trump and his cabinet members are making it clear that America’s political and military allies must pick up more of the financial tab for the joint policing of different parts of the world.

Reflecting this, the president’s blueprint proposes to increase Defense Department spending by $54 billion dollars, which would put military expenditures for 2018 at a total of $603 billion. The Department of Homeland Security would gain an additional $2.8 billion dollars for a total in 2018 of around $70 billion.

The eyes and ears of the surveillance state will, also, remain intact and grow. The only wiretapping that President Trump seems to mind was an alleged eavesdropping on his own conversations before he took office. As for the rest of us, well, Big Brother is watching and listening–for our own good. After all, it’s all part of making America “great” and “safe” again.

Cue Progressive Whining

To pay for increases in the warfare state, President Trump’s budgetary axe has fallen on a variety of “discretionary” welfare and redistributive programs. To cover the $54 billion increase in defense spending, $54 billion is to be cut from half of the of the budgeted 30 percent discretionary spending. It’s worth keeping in mind that all the teeth gnashing by the left is over a less than 1.5 percent decrease to the projected $4 trillion (and then some) that Uncle Sam will spend in 2018.

It must be admitted, conservative and classical liberal hearts can only be warmed by virtually every cut in this part of the budget. For example, Department of Agriculture spending will be reduced by 20.7 percent. However, it is worth observing that subsidies paid to farmers, including subsidies for not growing crops, are not on the chopping block. Trump does not want to antagonize a crucial part of rural Republican America that lives at the trough of government spending.

On the other hand, the State Department and related foreign aid programs would be slashed by almost 29 percent. Not many tears need be shed here, given that State Department programs and personnel are at the heart of America’s misguided global social engineering schemes, and foreign aid is merely a slush fund for foreign political power lusters that undermine real market-oriented economic development in other parts of the world.

This list goes on: Housing and Urban Development, down 12 percent; Health and Human Services, cut 16 percent; Commerce Department, reduced 16 percent; Education Department, decreased by over 13 percent (but with a shift of funds to increase falsely named “school choice” programs). The Interior Department is down almost 12 percent; the Labor Department cut nearly 21 percent.

The Environmental Protection Agency would be cut by over 31 percent. The climate and land-use social engineers are being driven berserk by this one. It is being forecast as the end of planet Earth that swarms of regulatory locusts will be reined in from plaguing the country with their wetland rules, land-use restrictions, market-hampering prohibitions, and abridgments of private property rights. The heavens will darken, the seas will rise, and the land will be barren. How will humanity survive without self-righteous elitists leading mankind to socially-sensitive, greener pastures?

O! The Humanities!

Additionally, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are targeted for a virtual 100 percent cut. Those concerned about the arts and humanities may have to put their private money where their mouths are.

The thought that those who listen to the moralizing, collectivist voices on National Public Radio may have to pay for it (either out of their own pockets or from capitalist commercial interruptions) is just too much for these delicate souls to bear.

Political pocket-pickers are warning that planned “Meals on Wheels” spending cuts threaten the poor and aged with starvation. But, in fact, 65 percent of the program’s funding comes from private donations or local and state governments, with only 35 percent funded by federal dollars. Furthermore, the day after the budget blueprint was released, the media reported that Meals on Wheels around the country received a more than 50 percent increase to their regular private donations rate. Private benevolence–amazingly!–materialized almost instantly to replace coercively collected funding with voluntary support for the charity that, apparently, many consider worthy of support.

Leaving the Entitlement State Intact

Donald Trump’s budgetary blueprint for American greatness needs to be put into the wider context. Where does this leave the size and scope of government in the United States?

Alas, Trump’s budget leaves it seemingly untouched. The entitlement programs are feeding the insatiable growth of America’s domestic system of political paternalism: the governmental spending surrounding Social Security and Medicare redistribution.

Under current legislation, their cost and intrusiveness will only get worse. In its January 2017 long-term federal government budgetary forecast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that if nothing changes legislatively, the “entitlement” programs will end up consuming nearly 80 percent of all the taxes collected by the United States government.

Since the remaining 20 percent of projected federal tax revenues will not sufficiently cover all projected defense and other “discretionary” spending, plus interest on the national debt between 2018 and 2027, the United States government will continue to run large annual budget deficits between now and then. This will add $10 trillion more to the total national debt over next decade.

Donald Trump made it clear during the primary and general presidential election campaigns in 2016 that he considers Social Security and Medicare sacrosanct, not subject to the budget cutter’s chopping block. In addition, ObamaCare may be repealed, but the reform that Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress have in mind will still leave a heavy fiscal footprint. This, too, will maintain and entrench Uncle Sam’s intrusive presence in the healthcare and medical insurance business, and will, inescapably, cost a lot of government dollars, though the full estimates are still forthcoming.

The Proposed Cuts Are Unlikely

Keep in mind that Trump’s budgetary blueprint is merely his administration’s recommendation to Congress, and especially to the House of Representatives where spending legislation is constitutionally supposed to originate. Already the grumbling has begun to be heard, not only from the Democratic Party minority in Congress but from members of the Republican Party majority, as well.

Abstract spending cuts almost always serve as good campaign rhetoric, especially for Republicans running for elected office, but like their Democratic Party counterparts, Republicans soon find themselves pressured and dependent upon the financial support of special interest groups, each of which feeds off of concrete government spending dollars.

The resulting resistance to fiscal repeal and retrenchment turns out to be no different than with the groups surrounding the Democrats. Plus, the Republican foreign policy hawks have all the big-spending military contractors to serve in the name of warding off foreign threats to American greatness.

At the end of the day, when the actual 2018 federal fiscal budget gets passed by Congress and signed by the president, it will no doubt contain fewer of the discretionary spending cuts than proposed in Trump’s blueprint. Other than adding whatever “repeal and reform” emerges out of the contest between ObamaCare and TrumpCare (or RyanCare), the “entitlement” portion of the federal government’s budget will remain untouched.

Challenging the Entitlement Premises

The fact is America is continuing to move in the long-run direction of fiscal unsustainability. The supposed untouchability of the “entitlement” segment of the federal budget will have to be made touchable. Nearly 90 years ago, in 1930, the famous “Austrian” economist, Ludwig von Mises, said to an audience of Viennese industrialists during an earlier economic crisis:

Whenever there is talk about decreasing public expenditures, the advocates of this fiscal spending policy voice their objection, saying that most of the existing expenditures, as well as the increasing expenditures, are inevitable . . . What exactly does ‘inevitable’ mean in this context?

That the expenditures are based on various laws that have been passed in the past is not an objection if the argument for eliminating these laws is based on their damaging effects on the economy. The metaphorical use of the term ‘inevitable’ is nothing but a haven in which to hide in the face of an inability to comprehend the seriousness of our situation. People do not want to accept that fact that the public budget has to be radically reduced.”

If there is any chance of stopping, reversing and repealing the welfare state, the entitlement language in political discourse has to be challenged. “Entitlement” presumes a right to something by some in the society, which in the modern redistributive mindset equally presumes an obligation to others to provide it.

It is essential to emphasize and explain the dollars and cents of the fiscal unsustainability of the entitlement society. And there are certainly a sufficient number of historical examples to point to for demonstration that the welfare state can go down the road to societal ruin.

In addition, the entitlement mindset must be confronted with an articulate and reasoned defense of individual liberty, based on a philosophy of individual rights to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Plus, the ethics of liberty must be shown to be inseparable from the idea of peaceful and voluntary association among people in all facets of life, and that government’s role is to secure and protect such liberty and individual rights, not to abridge and violate them.

If this is not done, and done successfully, the road to fiscal failure and paternalistic serfdom may be impossible from which to exit.

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Andrew Jackson Is a Poor Presidential Role Model

Andrew Jackson Is a Poor Presidential Role Model

Donald Trump added a portrait of Andrew Jackson to the White House Oval Office shortly after his inauguration. Why Jackson?

Well, Jackson’s defeat of incumbent John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election was the first great US political upset in which an anti-establishment candidate defeated an insider. This comparison no doubt pleases the man who kept Hillary Clinton from the White House.

Like Trump, Jackson also styled himself as a champion of the “common man,” and that’s a distinction that somehow follows him to this day. But does Jackson deserve to be remembered so fondly as the one who put power in the hands of the people? Let’s break down some of his greatest hits.

• Egalitarian Reforms. The Jacksonian Era was typified by a reforming zeal, including movements for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women. While these movements might have used egalitarian Jacksonian rhetoric, they had little to do with the real Andrew Jackson, who both owned slaves and subscribed to an already outdated cult of masculinity preoccupied with, among other things, defending public female virtue. (The man loved a good duel.)
• American Indian Removal. Jackson was the architect of the compulsory removal of Native Americans from their legal homes. This was a national plan for ethnic cleansing, coupled with the forcible redistribution of property from its rightful owners.
• Checks and Balances. Jackson’s Indian removal policy also ignored the system of checks and balances inherent in the federal system, directly defying the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia. Jackson did, however, stop short of calling Chief Justice John Marshall a “so-called judge.”
• The National Bank. The federal government had overreached its powers in creating the Second National Bank, and Jackson killed that institution. His dedication to defeating the bank, however, was driven by personal animosity more than sound intellectual foundations. (It wasn’t enough for Jackson’s enemies to lose; they had to be destroyed, and he used his power as president to wreak that destruction.) Jackson overstepped his own constitutional authority in his attack, and fighting one wrong with another is hardly great policy.
• State Nullification. Similarly, Jackson’s action against state nullification, when South Carolina sought to invalidate the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 on the grounds that they were unconstitutional, seems to have been less about principle than about his personal split with his former vice president, John C. Calhoun. Jackson’s stance against states’ rights aided the evolution of a powerful national government based on vigorous military suppression, a trademark of the Jacksonian presidency.
• Spoils System. Jackson’s embrace of the spoils system, rewarding his supporters (or cronies) with political positions, further concentrated and entrenched his and later presidents’ executive power.

What is the takeaway here? Rather than decentralizing power or returning it to the people, Jackson magnified his own. As a matter of fact, he claimed that he embodied the people in the same way that Louis XIV believed that he was France, earning Jackson the title “King Andrew I” from his opponents.

In short, for those who support liberty, Trump has chosen a troubling model for his presidency.

This makes Thomas Jefferson’s words to Daniel Webster in 1824 all the more important to remember:

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief.  His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.

Republished from Learn Liberty.

Amy Sturgis

Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University, specializes in Science Fiction/Fantasy and Native American Studies, and teaches at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Trump: Privacy for Me, Not for Thee

Trump: Privacy for Me, Not for Thee

President Donald Trump has a consistency problem on the issues of government surveillance and privacy. For the most part, Trump seems to make his ideological decisions based on how something impacts his life personally.

This has been made overwhelmingly apparent watching Trump spend the entire weekend condemning former President Obama for allegedly wiretapping the phones at Trump hotels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

While addressing the press and calling for a full congressional inquiry, President Trump referred to these actions as Obama’s “greatest abuse of power.”

To be sure, if Trump’s accusations about Barack Obama prove to be true, this is absolutely appalling on behalf of the former president. However, is this the greatest abuse of power by the Obama Administration? Hardly.

Hope and Change

The Obama presidency was supposed to usher in a new era of government transparency. The Bush years had left the people traumatized as civil liberties and other constitutional safeguards were disregarded in the name of national security and the war on terror.  

The people wanted change and President Obama was going to be the man who led this country back to freedom.

Unfortunately, that was not the case.

It wasn’t long before journalists had dubbed the Obama Administration one of the least transparent presidencies in modern times. To make matters worse, Obama continued to execute Bush’s destructive foreign policy strategy— he just did so in secret and kept it from the American public—or so he thought.

Thanks to journalist Jeremy Scahill, the world discovered that President Obama had not only continued, but actually escalated the use of drone warfare in the Middle East. In Scahill’s Oscar nominated film, Dirty Wars, it was also revealed that  America’s favorite peaceful president had a secret kill list which he used to go after enemy combatants, including American citizens.

The Edward Snowden NSA leaks came as a further blow to then President Obama, who was elected on a platform that promised to protect government whistleblowers. Of course, this section was conveniently removed from his change.org website shortly after Snowden’s first round of leaks.

Given this information you would think Trump would admire Snowden. After all, Snowden, like Trump, discovered that the government was illegally spying on its citizens, and spoke up. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“Kill the Traitor”

Uttering the phrase “kill the traitor” in 2013, Donald Trump called for the execution of Edward Snowden. During the campaign, Trump claimed that Snowden was working as a spy for Russia.

While similar rhetoric was often thrown around by other Republican presidential candidates, Trump’s continued disapproval of Snowden was particularly perplexing, since it was only thanks to another infamous government whistleblower that Trump was thrown a lifeline when he needed it the most.

Whether he will admit it or not, the leaked Access Hollywood footage dealt a huge blow to the Trump campaign. His offensive comments about women were putty in the hands of Hillary Clinton, who was desperately looking for any way to take him down.

Just when it appeared like the Trump campaign would never recover from his past remarks, Wikileaks changed the game by leaking several of John Podesta’s personal email’s that admitted wrongdoing on the part of the Democratic National Committee.

 

Trump seized on this moment and shifted the focus back to “crooked Hillary” and the Democratic Party and away from his own Access Hollywood scandal. Publicly declaring his love for Wikileaks, Trump went on to praise Assange for the good work he was doing while simultaneously condemning Snowden for the same actions.

It should also not be forgotten that during the 2016 legal battle between Apple and the Department of Justice, Trump called for a national boycott of Apple until the company agreed to unlock the phone of San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook.

Addressing a crowd Trump said:

"Apple ought to give the security for that phone, OK. What I think you ought to do is boycott Apple until such a time as they give that security number. How do you like that? I just thought of it. Boycott Apple.”

With these comments, Trump sided with the surveillance state – one that threatens and oppresses not only Americans but every digital user on the planet – rather than with commerce and consumers, who are in desperate need of privacy protection. Apple sought to give that to its customers, while Trump wanted to take it away.

Trump is absolutely right, the allegations that President Obama wiretapped his phones are indeed “very troubling.” However, they are no less troubling than the surveillance state that Trump has also advocated for both in his support of the Department of Justice’s fight against Apple, and his condemnation of Edward Snowden.

Now that Trump thinks he has been a victim of the same spying he has favored on everyone else, he flies into a fury of outrage. He is right now and wrong before.

Brittany Hunter

Brittany Hunter is an associate editor at FEE. Brittany studied political science at Utah Valley University with a minor in Constitutional studies.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Trump’s Economic Plan: Higher Taxes, Higher Inflation, and Higher Minimum Wage

Trump’s Economic Plan: Higher Taxes, Higher Inflation, and Higher Minimum Wage

That didn’t take long.

It was only days after Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination that the mask (such as it was) came off. Suddenly he was telling multiple interviewers that he could be talked into raising taxes, boosting the minimum wage, and printing enough money to pay the national debt in cheap dollars.

Some Emory University students “in pain” after “Trump 2016″ chalked on campus

Some Emory University students “in pain” after “Trump 2016″ chalked on campus


The specter of a Donald Trump presidency is so disturbing to some college students that they’re protesting pro-Trump chalk writings on their campus, according to a report by Emory University’s campus newspaper.

The words “Trump 2016″ appeared earlier this week scrawled in chalk around the college campus, the Emory Wheel reported Monday. In response, a few dozen students gathered at the school’s administration building later that day, holding signs that read “Stop Trump” and “Stop Hate.” According to the paper, the activists shouted, “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!”

When protesters moved to demonstrate inside the administration hall, school officials issued a swift answer. College president Jim Wagner met with the students, who expressed anxiety that the writings were threats to their safety rather than political speech, considering Georgia’s Republican primary was held earlier this month.

“The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity,” Wagner wrote in a university-wide email Tuesday. “During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.”

Some of the students, according to the Emory Wheel, complained about the slow response time to their grievances, although university administration officials met with demonstrators on the day the protests took place. One question posed to the university during the protest included: “Why did the swastikas [spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity house in 2014] receive a quick response while these chalkings did not?” Another asked if the university would “decry the support for this fascist, racist candidate” in an official campus statement.

In response, Wagner’s Tuesday email said the university “cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity.”

“As an academic community, we must value and encourage the expression of ideas, vigorous debate, speech, dissent, and protest,” he said. “It is important that we recognize, listen to, and honor the concerns of these students, as well as faculty and staff who may feel similarly.”

In the future, Wagner promised to make “immediate refinements” to the procedures addressing social justice issues on the campus.

The university further ruled the chalk writings a “violation of policy” because of where they had appeared.

In a statement to CBS News, a university spokeswoman said, “Chalkings by students are allowed as a form of expression on the Emory campus but must be limited to certain areas and must not deface campus property—these chalkings did not follow guidelines—that’s the issue regarding violation of policy, not the content.”

Donald Trump Is No Ronald Reagan

Donald Trump Is No Ronald Reagan


Before the GOP became the Party of Reagan, it was the Party of Lincoln. But you wouldn’t expect a Republican politician to spend a lot of time promising to free the slaves or preserve the Union. Trying to see today’s economic problems through Reagan-colored glasses isn’t impossible — we’re still over-regulated by a too-large government — but it can be distorting.

Similarly, casting the war on terrorism as a replay of the long battle against communism (which Reagan won) can be done, but it requires bending reality to theory. Marxism was a relatively brief and modern imposition on ancient cultures. Islam is an ancient religion, and radical Islam is an effort to fight off the imposition of modernity. Different threats and different contexts require different thinking.

All of these criticisms still stand. What’s different these days is the desperate effort to insist that Donald Trump is a new Reagan — not by Trump himself, but by a kind of conservative priesthood eager to prove by analogy what it can’t prove with facts or logic.

Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, and Rudy Giuliani are just a few of the prominent conservatives miraculously finding Reaganism in the outbursts of a loutish and crude real-estate developer the way the high lamas of Buddhism try to identify a new dalai lama based on a baby’s gurgling.

Most of their arguments are shockingly spurious given the intellects involved. Among the most common: “They said Reagan couldn’t win, too.” Logically, this has nothing to do with Trump’s alleged resemblance to Reagan (or Trump’s general-election chances). “They” — whoever they are — also claimed Kermit the Frog couldn’t win 270 electoral votes. That doesn’t mean they were wrong, or that Kermit is an amphibious Reaganite.

Indeed, all of the “They said X about Reagan, too” arguments are preposterous, but one stands out: “They said Reagan was a dunce, too.”

Of course, “they” were wrong about Reagan. But the “they” in 1980 were overwhelmingly liberal. Trump’s most important critics are overwhelmingly conservative. The claim that conservatives in 2016 are wrong about Trump because liberals 36 years ago were wrong about Reagan is a hard one to diagram on a grease board. And getting to the conclusion that these combined errors mean Trump is Reagan-like is the logical equivalent of crossing a canyon in three leaps.

In terms of personal character and ideological seriousness, Trump and Reagan could not be more different. Reagan was one of the most dignified politicians of the 20th century, one who turned his cheek to vicious attacks, refused to use profanity, and rarely showed an angry side. Meanwhile, Trump’s crude and vengeful streaks virtually define the man.

Reagan’s ideological principles were derived from decades of reading, speaking, and debating. Trump, meanwhile, is winging it.

“I don’t think he has an ideology,” Pat Buchanan told the Washington Post. “He very much is responding to the realities that he has encountered and his natural reactions to them. It’s not some intellectual construct.”

Trump backs price controls – free enterprise in peril

Trump backs price controls – free enterprise in peril


Donald Trump has once again demonstrated how his ill-conceived populist appeals will quickly commit him to public policies that conservatives have been working to defeat — for a generation or more. His latest example is a casual embrace government-set price controls – this time for pharmaceutical drugs. Government price controls and dictated similar mandates are policies Republicans have opposed for decades, led by fact-based conservative economists and purposeful conservative principles.

Price controls, mandated by government agencies, do not adapt to market conditions at anything other than glacial speed. The real price of consumer products – whether life saving medicine or the latest hair-growth cream – regularly shift at both the wholesale and retail levels. Economists – both conservative and liberal – have repeatedly demonstrated how government mandated price controls decimate expenditures like the research and development process. The incredible freedom scientists have to experiment within the United States over the previous decades has already produced multiple miracle drugs. These same freedoms and liberties are on the cusp of giving us even more ground breaking and innovative medicines. If candidate Trump’s plans were enacted, not only would research and development be severely reduced, but it would also force a severe limitation of the drugs Medicare patients can use today.

Yet here is Trump, naively backing this idea at a New Hampshire rally with rhetoric that is literally indistinguishable from liberal lines used by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Hillary Clinton.

This raises the question: if Trump were the standard-bearer for the Republicans – typically the more free-market party, though certainly not perfect on that score – what would stop the United States from becoming a European-style welfare state with its high taxes and low growth rates?

Certainly not Congressional Republicans are not the answer, who have been shying away from the issue. They have repeatedly allowed progressives to frame the debate as a supposed common-sense “negotiation” – as if government-set price controls were just another routine business transaction.

Trump has used the same cynical progressive rhetoric elsewhere. He has claimed the only reason the government doesn’t seize on hundreds of billions in savings is somehow “because of the drug companies.”

Total nonsense and typical Trump bluster. The way Medicare currently purchases drugs is to take the average price of that drug on the private sector. The price of the drug on the private sector is subject to the same laws of supply and demand like any other good or service. However, there is a notable influencing factor which lowers the cost of prescriptions for millions of Americans. Most self-insured companies and the larger health insurance companies employ pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). PBMs negotiate pharmacy expenditures on behalf of those companies – companies which serve tens of millions more patients than Medicare’s 41 million. Negotiating on behalf of this vast number of U.S. citizens gives the PBMs the “clout” necessary to drive hard bargains – and obtain prices lower than those received by Medicare beneficiaries.

What Sanders, Clinton and others are proposing is to let Medicare demand a given price from the drug companies – regardless of the costs needed to produce that medicine or fund further research. If the company simply couldn’t produce the medicine at the demanded price, the drug would then not even be available to a very large pool of Medicare patients.

The key distinction between the private plans negotiating with the drug companies and Medicare is that people on private plans have some degree of choice about which plan they pay for. Medicare patients have only Medicare as an option so long as the government is paying for their health care.

Many other countries have tried out “magical” economic thinking with price controls. In places like Germany, France and Japan, the best-performing drugs simply become unavailable, forcing doctors to prescribe a higher quantity of less-effective drugs. Thus the average price for each prescribed drug goes down but overall per person spending on drugs goes up. Germany and France, for example, both spend a higher portion of their health care spending on drugs than the U.S. does. Meanwhile, price controls further damage research and development because the government is artificially rewarding low prices rather than efficacy. Companies have a reduced financial reason to invest in better drugs. This is one of the reasons new drug development in the U.S. is dramatically better than the rest of the world.

Trump absurdly claimed price controls would save $300 billion a year. That’s more than 80 percent of the entire amount of money everyone in our country annually spends on drugs. Not just Medicare – everyone in the United States. That’s just fantasy – even Bernie Sanders doesn’t pretend that fantasy could happen.

The rise of American authoritarianism

The rise of American authoritarianism


The American media, over the past year, has been trying to work out something of a mystery: Why is the Republican electorate supporting a far-right, orange-toned populist with no real political experience, who espouses extreme and often bizarre views? How has Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly become so popular?

What’s made Trump’s rise even more puzzling is that his support seems to cross demographic lines — education, income, age, even religiosity — that usually demarcate candidates. And whereas most Republican candidates might draw strong support from just one segment of the party base, such as Southern evangelicals or coastal moderates, Trump currently does surprisingly well from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the towns of upstate New York, and he won a resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses.

Perhaps strangest of all, it wasn’t just Trump but his supporters who seemed to have come out of nowhere, suddenly expressing, in large numbers, ideas far more extreme than anything that has risen to such popularity in recent memory. In South Carolina, a CBS News exit poll found that 75 percent of Republican voters supported banning Muslims from the United States. A PPP poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning gays and lesbians from the country. Twenty percent said Lincoln shouldn’t have freed the slaves.

Last September, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst named Matthew MacWilliams realized that his dissertation research might hold the answer to not just one but all three of these mysteries.

MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear.

So MacWilliams naturally wondered if authoritarianism might correlate with support for Trump.

He polled a large sample of likely voters, looking for correlations between support for Trump and views that align with authoritarianism. What he found was astonishing: Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any other indicator. He later repeated the same poll in South Carolina, shortly before the primary there, and found the same results, which he published in Vox.

As it turns out, MacWilliams wasn’t the only one to have this realization. Miles away, in an office at Vanderbilt University, a professor named Marc Hetherington was having his own aha moment. He realized that he and a fellow political scientist, the University of North Carolina’s Jonathan Weiler, had essentially predicted Trump’s rise back in 2009, when they discovered something that would turn out to be far more significant than they then realized.

That year, Hetherington and Weiler published a book about the effects of authoritarianism on American politics. Through a series of experiments and careful data analysis, they had come to a surprising conclusion: Much of the polarization dividing American politics was fueled not just by gerrymandering or money in politics or the other oft-cited variables, but by an unnoticed but surprisingly large electoral group — authoritarians.

Their book concluded that the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.

This trend had been accelerated in recent years by demographic and economic changes such as immigration, which “activated” authoritarian tendencies, leading many Americans to seek out a strongman leader who would preserve a status quo they feel is under threat and impose order on a world they perceive as increasingly alien.

Trump embodies the classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive

These Americans with authoritarian views, they found, were sorting into the GOP, driving polarization. But they were also creating a divide within the party, at first latent, between traditional Republican voters and this group whose views were simultaneously less orthodox and, often, more extreme.

Over time, Hetherington and Weiler had predicted, that sorting would become more and more pronounced. And so it was all but inevitable that, eventually, authoritarians would gain enough power within the GOP to make themselves heard.

At the time, even Hetherington and Weiler did not realize the explosive implications: that their theory, when followed to its natural conclusion, predicted a looming and dramatic transformation of American politics. But looking back now, the ramifications of their research seem disturbingly clear.

Authoritarians are thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate, to seek the imposition of order where they perceive dangerous change, and to desire a strong leader who will defeat those fears with force. They would thus seek a candidate who promised these things. And the extreme nature of authoritarians’ fears, and of their desire to challenge threats with force, would lead them toward a candidate whose temperament was totally unlike anything we usually see in American politics — and whose policies went far beyond the acceptable norms.

A candidate like Donald Trump.

Even Hetherington was shocked to discover quite how right their theory had been. In the early fall of 2015, as Trump’s rise baffled most American journalists and political scientists, he called Weiler. He asked, over and over, “Can you believe this? Can you believe this?”

This winter, I got in touch with Hetherington, MacWilliams, and several other political scientists who study authoritarianism. I wanted to better understand the theory that seemed to have predicted, with such eerie accuracy, Trump’s rise. And, like them, I wanted to find out what the rise of authoritarian politics meant for American politics. Was Trump just the start of something bigger?

These political scientists were, at that moment, beginning to grapple with the same question. We agreed there was something important happening here — that was just beginning to be understood.

How Mitt Romney Is Totally Wrong About Donald Trump

How Mitt Romney Is Totally Wrong About Donald Trump


The easy rejoinder to Romney is to say he’s accurate but his timing is too late to matter. Indeed, as Trump’s march to the Republican nomination proceeds, this is fast becoming the conventional wisdom among GOP activists, whether they are part of the #NeverTrump crew or are coming to terms with having the guy at the top of their ticket. As longtime Republican consultant, no in-the-tank Trump loyalist Alex Castellanos recently wrote

Donald Trump whipped the establishment and it is too late for the limp GOP establishment to ask their mommy to step in and rewrite the rules because they were humiliated for their impotence.

If Trump is going to be our nominee, as I believe he is, it is our mission to support Trump and make him the best nominee and president possible.

What both sides—conservatives who say they will NEVER vote for Trump under any circumstances and conservatives who will grudgingly fall in line—misunderstand is that Trump isn’t a fraud perpetrated on the Republican Party, nor on the throngs of Republican primary voters who have propelled him to victory all over the place.

Put simply, Trump is the distillation of conservative Republican politics for all of the 21st century. He’s not the cause of a GOP implosion, but the final effect of an intellectual and political hollowing-out of any semblance of commitment to limited government, individual rights, and free markets. He is what happens when you fail to live up to your rhetoric and aspirations again and again.

Yes, as Romney stated, The Donald has shifted positions on all sorts of issues over the years (immigration, outsourcing, abortion, whatever). As if that isn’t a clearer indictment of the Republican Party when it ran both houses of Congress and the White House in the early part of this century. Winning the most-contested election in the history of the United States, George W. Bush campaigned on reducing the size, scope, and spending of government—and then proceeded to kick out the jams on constraints on government outlays.

Leave aside massive increases in defense spending and the scope of foreign policy ambitions for the moment (we’ll get to them). With help of “conservative” and “establishment” legislators (it’s far from clear what either of these terms really means, except to the GOP Mensheviks and Bolsheviks tossing them at each other like Molotov Cocktails), the Republicans pushed No Child Left Behind, the single-biggest expansion of the federal government into education in decades, and the creation of a budget-busting prescription-drug entitlement for seniors. They signed off on Sarbanes-Oxley, a dumb regulatory response to the Enron scandal and bursting of the tech bubble, which helped push IPOs to London and foreign capitals. Bush and the GOP signed off on protectionist measures against foreign steel and timber when it suited them while completely bungling federal responses to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Then there was the Republican response to the 9/11 attacks. The Republican Congress signed off on The Patriot Act, which vies with Hillary Clinton’s latest memoir for the title of least-read (even by the authors) doorstop of this century. They created not just the demonstrably useless Transportation Security Administration but an entirely new and sclerotic cabinet agency, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And now as conservatives and Republicans whine about Donald Trump’s authoritarian desire to “open up the libel laws,” recall what Republican Attorney General John Ashcroft said to anyone who dast dissent from Total Information Awareness:

“Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,” he inveighed before Congress, “your tactics only aid terrorists.”

When it came to actually prosecuting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the GOP was anything but fiscally responsible or part of what used to be called the “reality-based community.” Rather, Republicans deliberately funded (still) ongoing activites via “emergency supplemental” spending procedures, so they didn’t really have to fully explain to the public how much loot they were spending. That underhanded process only stopped once Barack Obama took office, in the brief moment when he and the Democrats deigned to actually produce and write budgets. Having succeeded with passing tax cuts, the Republicans—despite constantly bashing the Democrats as big spenders and deficit whores—never bothered to discuss how to pay for massive increases in military spending. Or Medicare spending. Or any other sort of outlay that ballooned under Bush and the Republican Congress. But don’t you see? It’s Obama and the Democrats who are to blame for everything—even when the GOP controls Congress?

Who created TARP and which party’s 2008 candidate suspended his campaign so that he could race back to Washington to bail out the big banks and, eventually Chrysler and GM? On his way out the door (and after a last-ditch $100 million stimulus plan that is largely forgotten to all but the nation’s debtors), George W. Bush actually said, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” Like much of what Donald Trump says today, of course, this is a lie, or at least an exaggeration, to the extent it pretends that George W. Bush, whose greatest business deal involved family connections and eminent domain, ever embodied free-market principles.

But what’s past is past, right? And today’s conservatives all hated Bush and the GOP Congress, right, even if they did endorse them George W. and company (except when he tried to privatize Social Security or, even worse, pass immigration reform).

In 2008 and 2012, the Republican Party ran such paragons of principle and consistency as John McCain and Mitt Romney for president. What was notable about McCain, besides his reflexive war-mongering, was that he ultimately flipped from being actually kind of open-bordersy to cutting TV commercials demanding that we “complete the danged fence.” As for Romney, who now sits in smug judgement of Donald Trump, he was that GOP guy who “evolved” on abortion and gay rights (even though Republicans don’t believe in evolution) and, oh yeah, created the program that became the model for Obamacare.

RNC Rules to Stifle Ron Paul in 2012 Could Come Back to Bite in 2016

RNC Rules to Stifle Ron Paul in 2012 Could Come Back to Bite in 2016


The Republican National Committee, or RNC, may use the tactics it used to stifle Ron Paul in 2012 to handle a possible floor fight over Donald Trump.

The first order of business at the Republican Convention this coming June will be to ratify new rules. What this means is that the rules the RNC agreed on after the Convention in 2012 will expire as soon as the gavel drops to open the new meeting.

Now, usually this is mainly procedural – the party affirming the parts of the Convention rules that are still applicable, maybe changing around some things for the benefit of also-rans or the standard bearer.

However, in recent years there’s been a push to use the rule changes to undercut the party’s more extreme, populist and anti-government wings.

In 2012 there was a very real chance that Ron Paul’s supporters would upend the entire Convention by forcing a fight over their candidate. Rick Ungar has a good breakdown of what happened, but here’s a quick play-by-play of the situation.

Paul’s supporters were going to use pluralities in five states to force Paul’s name onto the ballot through Rule 40 (B). The rule specified that that be the threshold for placing a candidate’s name on the ballot.

In other words, 40 (B) said that any candidate with the largest share of delegates in five states could be placed on the ballot for nomination. If Paul, for example, had 30 percent but no one had higher, he would have a plurality.

As a way to stop the insurgency against Romney and ensure his victory, the RNC changed the rule to a majority of delegates in eight states. Now a candidate needed to win at least 50.1 % of delegates from eight states to be on the ballot. And that’s still the way it is, and the way it will be until the 2016 Convention.

Under these current rules, there’s no way of determining a clear delegate winner until Super Tuesday, at least. By switching from plurality to majority, it makes New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina relatively meaningless. All three states will see a roster of candidates over ten deep. Getting a majority of those delegates is near impossible by primary voting.

The problem for the RNC only gets worse when you consider the threat of Donald Trump’s poll numbers.

Waking Up to the Reality of Fascism

Waking Up to the Reality of Fascism


Donald Trump is on a roll, breaking new ground in uses for state power.

Closing the internet? Sure. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people… We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some ways.”

Registering Muslims? Lots of people thought he misspoke. But he later clarified: “There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems.”

Why not just bar all Muslims at the border? Indeed, and to the massive cheers of his supporters, Trump has called for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Internment camps? Trump cites the FDR precedent: Italians, Germans, and Japanese “couldn’t go five miles from their homes. They weren’t allowed to use radios, flashlights. I mean, you know, take a look at what FDR did many years ago and he’s one of the most highly respected presidents.”

Rounding up millions of people? He’ll create a “deportation force” to hunt down and remove 11 million illegal immigrants.

Killing wives and children? That too. “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.”

Political Vocabulary

This litany of ideas has finally prompted mainstream recognition of the incredibly obvious: If Donald Trump has an ideology, it is best described as fascism.

Even Republican commentators, worried that he might be unstoppable, are saying it now. Military historian and Marco Rubio adviser Max Boot tweeted that “Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it.” Bush adviser John Noonan said the same.

The mainstream press is more overt. CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Trump point blank if he is a fascist. The Atlantic writes: “It’s hard to remember a time when a supposedly mainstream candidate had no interest in differentiating ideas he’s endorsed from those of the Nazis.”

There is a feeling of shock in the air, but anyone paying attention should have seen this last summer. Why did it take so long for the consciousness to dawn?

The word fascism has been used too often in political discourse, and almost always imprecisely. It’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf. You warn about wolves so much that no one takes you seriously when a real one actually shows up.

Lefties since the late 1930s have tended to call non-leftists fascists — which has led to a discrediting of the word itself. As time went on, the word became nothing but a vacuous political insult. It’s what people say about someone with whom they disagree. It doesn’t mean much more than that.

Then in the 1990s came Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 100 percent.” This law provided a convenient way to dismiss all talk of fascism as Internet babblings deployed in the midst of flame wars.

Godwin’s Law made worse the perception that followed the end of World War II: that fascism was a temporary weird thing that afflicted a few countries but had been vanquished from the earth thanks to the Allied war victory. It would no longer be a real problem but rather a swear word with no real substance.

Fascism Is Real

Without the term fascism as an authentic descriptor, we have a problem. We have no accurate way to identify what is in fact the most politically successful movement of the 20th century. It is a movement that still exists today, because the conditions that gave rise to it are unchanged.

The whole burden of one of the most famous pro-freedom books of the century — Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom — was to warn that fascism was a more immediate and pressing danger to the developed world than Russian-style socialism. And this is for a reason: Hayek said that “brown” fascism did not represent a polar opposite of “red” socialism. In the interwar period, it was common to see both intellectuals and politicians move fluidly from one to the other.

“The rise of Fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period,” wrote Hayek, “but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.”

In Hayek’s reading, the dynamic works like this. The socialists build the state machinery, but their plans fail. A crisis arrives. The population seeks answers. Politicians claiming to be anti-socialist step up with new authoritarian plans that purport to reverse the problem. Their populist appeal taps into the lowest political instincts (nativism, racism, religious bigotry, and so on) and promises a new order of things under better, more efficient rule.

5 Times Trump Told You He Loves Big Government

5 Times Trump Told You He Loves Big Government


We all know them: friends and relatives, even media personalities, who we thought were hardline conservatives are now swooning over Donald Trump, the next great savior of the Republic.

Over Thanksgiving dinner and many texts since, one relative explained his allegiance to Trump with exuberance. Appeals to how his belief in property rights doesn’t match Trump’s enthusiasm for eminent domain, requests for explanations on why Trump has contributed to the successful elections of such far-Left Democrats as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, or why Trump used to be a Democrat, met obfuscation.

Perhaps if the Trump fans heard it from the Donald himself, they might be willing to reconsider their support. So here are five instances Trump told us all he is actually a liberal.

Trump expounded on his favorite subject, immigration, during the CNN Republican primary debate. Sandwiched in between many “right-wing” fantasies was a seemingly conservative idea, but upon closer examination, it reveals a very liberal premise: “A woman gets pregnant. She’s nine months, she walks across the border, she has the baby in the United States, and we take care of the baby for 85 years? I don’t think so.”

I guess we (the taxpayers via the government) are supposed to take care of everyone from the moment they’re born to the moment they die.

A conservative or libertarian would recognize that welfare is as much a drag on the economy as anti-immigrant activists claim immigration is, if not more so. Yet Trump accepts our welfare state as an unchangeable, natural part of how the government cares for its people.

In an interview on “60 Minutes” this September, Trump opened up on his not-so-conservative ideas for healthcare reform. Maintaining that Obamacare, which gave the federal government much greater control over the health insurance industry, was a disaster, he said about healthcare that “the government’s gonna pay for it.”

Here’s an excerpt, as covered by John Nolte from Breitbart (emphasis his and mine):

Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 40, 50, 55 percent.

Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?

Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, ‘No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But–‘

Scott Pelley: Universal health care.

Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.

Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?

Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably–

Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

Donald Trump: –the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.

Of course, this is nothing new from Trump. The Donald has supported Hillary’s single-payer ideas in the past, and though he downplayed his support for single payer during the GOP Fox debate by saying “it could have worked in a different age,” (15 years ago, when he stated his support for single payer in the United States) when he’s pressed, he betrays his true convictions about the role of government in our lives.

Oh, and if they like their plans and doctors, they can keep their plans and doctors. Sound familiar?

In 2007, Trump responded to Wolf Blitzer’s prompt on Hillary’s most recent iteration of universal healthcare: “I think it was very good. It’s a very very complex setup for things going on right now in terms of healthcare, but she came out with an idea, sounds like a pretty good idea, and a lot of people like it and embraced it. “

Also, too, from one of Trump’s books (“The America We Deserve”), he confesses his affinity for a single-payer system like that of Canada: “The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than America…We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.”

Some call Trump’s plans a “clash with Republican orthodoxy,” but it’s not just that—it’s an embrace of liberal orthodoxy.

In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Trump opined on the subject of eminent domain,(the power of government to seize private property, with compensation, and give it to another private party for development): “Eminent domain for massive projects, for instance, if you’re gonna create thousands of jobs, and you have somebody that’s in the way, and you need a house in a certain location…because you’re going to build this massive development and going to employ thousands of people…that without this little house you can’t build the factory, I think eminent domain is fine.”

As long as the developer believes he’s going to improve the local economy, it’s totally fine to take someone’s private property.

In other words, as long as the developer believes he’s going to improve the local economy, it’s totally fine to take someone’s private property. Not for building a highway for public use, mind you, which is the other example Trump said was “wonderful,” but for another private entity to take and develop for private purposes. Such a position is neither constitutional (according to a literal reading), nor conservative.

Want illegal immigrants deported? You can have all of them sent packing, never to return, for one low price of $400 billion!

What does your package include? According to Reason, around 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers that would constitute yet another layer of expensive and tedious bureaucracy. For every new “frontline” enforcement officer, there is a chain of command involving even more salaried and pensioned employees, and plenty of bureaucratic red tape holding it together.

You can have all of them sent packing, never to return, for one low price of $400 billion!

Trump’s official position paper quotes the president of the ICE Officers Council on immigration:

“Only approximately 5,000 officers and agents within ICE perform the lion’s share of ICE’s immigration mission…Compare that to the Los Angeles Police Department at approximately 10,000 officers. Approximately 5,000 officers in ICE cover 50 states, Puerto Rico and Guam, and are attempting to enforce immigration law against 11 million illegal aliens already in the interior of the United States…Since 9-11, the U.S. Border Patrol has tripled in size, while ICE’s immigration enforcement arm, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), has remained at relatively the same size.”

Those who actually believe one of government’s core problems is inefficiency and believe in the power of free markets should recognize that Trump’s policy is based on his faith that government can make it all better. Government can save your job, government can root out all the criminals, government can. But in fact, in most areas of our lives, government cannot.

Hating the Establishment Is Not the Same as Supporting Liberty

Hating the Establishment Is Not the Same as Supporting Liberty


Many friends of mine — people who have worked for the progress of liberty for years — are mightily encouraged by the popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. My friends point out that they are both radicals of a sort, people who represent a threat to the established political order. We too are against the establishment, so their rise suggests rising discontent with the status quo. That’s a step in the right direction, they say.

As far as it goes, I see the point, and I sympathize. In fact, on these pages, I’ve drawn parallels between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement: both oppose the status quo in ways partisans of liberty can appreciate.

But there’s a problem. The state power we oppose is not identical to the establishment we reject. You can overthrow the establishment and still be left with a gigantic machinery of legalized exploitation. All the agencies, laws, regulations, and powers are still in place. And now you have a problem: someone else is in charge of the state itself. You might call it a new establishment. It could be even more wicked than the one you swept away.

Indeed, it usually is. Maybe always.

What is an establishment? It is a network of large and cooperating interest groups that have developed a stable relationship with state power. It includes finance, organized labor, public bureaucrats, government contractors, big businesses with quid pro quo relationships with regulators and politicians, political families with a strong stake in the election process, intellectuals at state-friendly think tanks and universities, and so on.

Czarist Russia had a deeply entrenched establishment: the church, business, government, aristocracy all working together in a stable relationship. The corruption was obvious. Then it became intolerable with the war draft and rampant inflation. The establishment failed and was overthrown. What came it its place was a transitional government and finally Bolshevik rule.

Weimar Germany had an entrenched establishment: banking, government, corporations, bureaucracy all working together. The corruption was obvious. Then it became intolerable with hyperinflation and deep economic retrenchment. People were suffering and looking for answers. Most people regarded Hitler as a non-ideal messenger, but he was fine in a pinch. No one expected the results.

The list of failed establishments replaced by still more wicked states is long indeed: Mexico, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Venezuela in the last century, and Iraq, Syria, and Libya in our own times.

The conflation of the state and the establishment has caused countless revolutionary movements to go wrong. Eastern Europe overthrew its establishments in 1989 but kept their states, resulting in mixed-economy social democracies. Russia got rid of the Bolsheviks in 1990 and created an authoritarian oligarchy in its place. To be sure, the results in these cases were better than before. But as the Italian, Russian, French, and German cases illustrate, that is not always the case. The results differ according to the plans and designs of the new power holders.

You might point to the American Revolution as a contrary case. We tossed out the British monarchy and invented freedom! But think again. The war itself created a new establishment consisting of politicians, military generals, bond dealers, and influential landholders. Twelve years after the Declaration of Independence, these groups got together and formed a new government that, in time, became as oppressive and restrictive — and in some ways, more so — as the one the revolutionaries overthrew. And this occurred despite the existence of classical liberal political norms and intellectual culture.

Nonetheless, in our times, freedom lovers have become so enraptured with the idea of opposing the establishment as such that many have lost sight of the actual goal of establishing freedom. It’s for this reason that so many have fallen for Donald Trump’s claim that he deserves support solely because he owes nothing to anyone. Therefore, he is not part of the establishment.

Why is that good for liberty? He has said nothing about dismantling power. Indeed, he is on record with his desire to radically expand the power of the state. He wants surveillance, controls on the internet, religious tests for migration, war-like tariffs, industrial planning, and autocratic foreign-policy power. He’s praised police power and toyed with ideas such as internment and killings of political enemies. His entire governing philosophy boils down to arbitrary, free-wheeling authoritarianism.

As for Sanders, everything that is bad about the current establishment he promises to make worse with more programs, bureaucracy, taxes, controls, and government power in order to making life fair, just, and equitable. He speaks as if he’s never heard of the failed history of socialism and certainly hasn’t learned anything from it.

Some of these ideas are so extreme that, it’s true, the establishment doesn’t like them. That’s a good thing. Establishments are as Machiavelli described: stable machines that keep competitors at bay but otherwise seek to make the system work for themselves. They resist rampant populism that would lead to a pillaging of the nation that is serving them so well.

To understand Machiavelli, realize that his black beast was the cleric Savonarola, Florence’s quasi-dictator who led a mass movement of crazed pietists who pillaged and burned material possessions as a pathway to heaven. The Bonfire of the Vanities of 1487 was one result. This is exactly the kind of mania that establishments exist to keep at bay.

It is the height of political naivete and historical ignorance to believe that anti-establishment populism and the cause of human liberty are united in the same struggle. They are not.

Not that there is anything wrong with “the people” as such. As Trump might say, “I love the people.” They are great as consumers using their own property, as workers and entrepreneurs creating value, as family members, as managers of their own lives. But the people as absolute rulers over the political system? That’s a different matter. For instance, polls show that many people (30% of Republicans, 19% of Democrats) support bombing Agrabah, the fictional country in Disney’s “Aladdin.”

Trump Says He Supports Reauthorizing Patriot Act, NSA Metadata Collection

Trump Says He Supports Reauthorizing Patriot Act, NSA Metadata Collection


2016 Republican presidential candidate and billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump said that he supports reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act and bulk cell phone metadata collection by the National Security Agency in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show earlier this month.

In the above-embedded clip, Hewitt asks Trump, “On metadata collection, Ted Cruz is glad the NSA got out of it. Marco Rubio wants it back. What’s Donald Trump think?”

“Well, I tend to err on the side of security, I must tell you,” Trump replied, “and I’ve been there for longer than you would think. But, you know, when you have people that are beheading if you’re a Christian and frankly for lots of other reasons, when you have the world looking at us and would like to destroy us as quickly as possible, I err on the side of security, and so that’s the way it is, that’s the way I’ve been, and some people like that, frankly, and some people don’t like that.”