Politics Archives

Thursday

May 21, 2020

Why are US shares performing so well when the economy isn’t?

A staggering 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April and yet the US stock market had its best month for decades, with the S&P 500 up 13 percent. Since then job losses have continued to mount, and yet the market is still higher. How can US shares be doing so well when the evidence of economic devastation is overwhelming? Even odder, the US stock market (S&P 500, down 13 percent year to date) is doing far better than the UK (FTSE 100, down 23 percent YTD) and European indices (Eurostoxx, down 26 percent YTD), and yet UK and European governments have protected millions of jobs through various furloughing schemes.

Rachel Bovard

Clear and absent danger: why proxy voting violates the American system

When House Democrats passed their $3 trillion coronavirus ‘relief’ package late last week, they also jammed through a rules change on proxy voting that fundamentally transforms the nature of the House of Representatives and junks centuries of tradition. Because of a change to House rules, members will now be able to submit their votes from afar. They will not have to travel back to DC to vote: they can instead send their ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to a colleague, who will submit it on their behalf. One member can submit up to 10 votes at a time, meaning that the will of the House, which normally takes 218 members in the chamber, could be determined with only 21 members physically present.

Leonard Toboroff

Obama’s political police

In the beginning there was a clandestine ‘surveillance’ and ‘unmasking’ program by operatives in the Obama executive branch, targeting figures in some way related to President-Elect Trump during his 75-day transition period. But on January 5, 2017 the outgoing Obama administration took a fateful step. Obama convened a meeting in the Oval Office; present were his VP, the Deputy AG, his National Security Adviser, the heads of the FBI and CIA and perhaps one or two others. A decision was taken to open a counter-terrorism investigation. The target: the incoming president, Trump. The FBI chief, Comey, was dispatched the next day to brief Trump about an ongoing investigation, but hide from him that he was the target.

Wednesday

May 20, 2020

Will Lloyd

Trump’s hydroxychloroquine kick is a billionaire quirk

Though it is yet to enjoy the endorsement of the UN, or the approval of the Supreme Court, the greatest human right of all is the right to self-abuse. Mankind, divided in so many ways, is nevertheless bound together by its desire to ride lawnmowers at speed, or take selfies on cliff edges, or eat bats, or jump from appalling heights out of planes. The right to self-abuse, as costly as it is, will never be legislated out of existence. It cannot be willed away either. It is exercised by the wise and the ignorant in equal measure; by the poor, the slightly less poor, and the rich too. As long as there are human beings, there will be men who find it amusing to eat a cactus. Does the President have the same right to do the Stupid Thing as the rest of us do?

Tuesday

May 19, 2020

Karol Markowicz

Boycotting China is not that easy

China’s various human rights abuses, their treatment of women, their savagery toward religious people and their chokehold on Taiwan and Hong Kong, has long made them a target for economic boycotts by Westerners. But executing a successful one is exceedingly difficult to achieve. In 2003, disappointed that the George W. Bush administration reaffirmed their ‘One China’ policy in regards to Taiwan, I launched my own boycott of Chinese goods. It was difficult but felt worthwhile to spend extra time looking for the ‘made in’ label on goods I was buying. And then I needed a shower curtain. I visited store after store and could not find one made anywhere except in China. I lived without a curtain for months before giving in and buying a Chinese-made one.

Dominic Green

Trump picks a Swedish model

Donald Trump is moving toward a Swedish model. His vitality sustained by regular doses of hydroxychloroquine, President Prophylaxis is pushing hard for re-entry. His goal? Normality or, this being the Trump presidency, the next best thing. And that, as Trump so succinctly put it, means ‘a lot of death’.Our future is Swedish. Not naked saunas and reindeer stew, but the Swedish model: herd immunity against COVID-19. The Swedes went their own way when, as in Ingmar Bergman’s chucklefest The Seventh Seal, the plague swept up from the south. Being hardy northerners, they pursued their own corona-strategy and continued to live as normally as possible.

Roger Kimball

How are the public meant to trust the rule of law?

You have to hand it to the New York Times. They certainly know how to spin a story. Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr answered some questions about the ongoing criminal investigation into the so-called 'Russian collusion’ inquiry conducted by Robert Mueller and other people in the FBI and the Obama administration. He did not expect, he said, 'based on the information I have today,' that either President Obama or Vice President Biden would be the subject of a criminal investigation. 'Our concern over potential criminality,' he continued, 'is focused on others.’ Perhaps that acknowledgment would be grounds for sighs of relief from Martha’s Vineyard and wherever Joe Biden’s basement is.

Kate Hyde

The Stacey Abrams presidency

‘You don’t run for second place.’ That’s how Stacey Abrams responded when asked if she would consider being presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s running mate during a March 2019 interview on ABC’s The View. Annoyed at the posed hypothetical, the 2018 Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate’s answer lacked a basic understanding of her place in the Democratic party. But now, a short year later, Abrams is making it abundantly clear to anyone who is willing to listen: she is absolutely, passionately and gracelessly running for second place, so help her God.

Freddy Gray

Trump needs the Catholic vote

On Twitter yesterday, Donald Trump sent out the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. ‘Today we commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Saint John Paul II,’ tweeted the President. ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ This was not just Trump being thoughtful about a great spiritual leader. It was an electoral appeal to Catholics on social media and a move that suggests Trump is worried about the Catholic vote. He’s right to be. There are endless debates about the extent to which America’s Catholics decide elections — or, indeed, whether the Catholic vote exists at all, given the diversity of the nation’s sprawling Catholic population.

Monday

May 18, 2020

Will Lloyd

Is it time to bring back Steve Bannon?

Until recently, it seemed unlikely that Donald Trump would need to call on the services of his former strategist Steve Bannon ever again. Why would he need a fire-spewing insurgent like Bannon, given that he was governing from a position of strength? The economy was at Mach 8; unemployment was at record lows; Kanye West was a personal friend. Above all, this presidency was good television. Viewers would want to find out what happened next. Now refrigerated corpse trucks rumble through the streets of New York City. The number of unemployed threatens to raise John Steinbeck from his tomb to write realistic novels about down-and-out gig workers. ‘We are living in a failed state,’ lamented an uber-viral George Packer article a few weeks ago.

Amber Duke

Americans are paying the price for the rotten meat business

Please don’t make me eat the tofu dog. America has reopened in time for the Fourth of July, but COVID-19 is forcing plant-based mock-meat onto the nation’s festive paper plate. The meat industry’s supply chains are disrupted. Families will be forced to consume tofu, mycoproteins and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat at their annual cookouts. This is not the American way — but meat is money. The meat industry, like any other American industry, is being wrecked by corner-cutters and monopolists — and we all have to digest the results. More than 4,000 meatpacking workers have been infected with COVID-19. Single plants have experienced hundreds of cases. Entire operations have closed down.

Andrew Bacevich

Still, the Global War on Terrorism goes on

I can think of only a single positive thing to say about World War One: it ended. Yet in addition to precluding any further waste of lives, the Armistice of November 1918 and the ensuing Paris Peace Conference did something else. It allowed historians and other writers to begin taking stock of this ghastly episode, which had caused death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Making sense of the so-called Great War exceeded the limits of human capacity. Yet however imperfectly, at least it might be understood. Why had the war happened? Why had it lasted so long? What had motivated the belligerents? What did this horrendous cataclysm signify, both politically and morally? Finally, how could the recurrence of such a debacle be averted?

Matt Mayer

It isn’t necessarily the economy, stupid!

'It’s the economy, stupid!' With those now famous words, the Democratic strategist James Carville summarized the 1992 election between President George H.W. Bush and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville captured a fundamental reality. From 1932 to today, only three incumbent presidents have lost their reelection campaigns: Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and H W Bush in 1992. Each man fell thanks to economic woes. As of March 1, 2020, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was also all about the economy, stupid. Trump’s 'Keep America Great!' economic record had been very strong. The stock market had hit record highs, with the S&P 500 reaching nearly 3,400 and the DJIA almost topping 30,000 in mid-February.

Sunday

May 17, 2020

Daniel McCarthy

Why did Justin Amash give up?

Three weeks after announcing his bid for the Libertarian party presidential nomination, Justin Amash has called it off. What went wrong? His brief campaign was a media success, if nothing else — and spreading the libertarian gospel to a wider audience by getting on shows like Meet the Press is all that a Libertarian nominee can reasonably ask for. Amash couldn’t have had any illusions about that: he’s self-indulgently idealistic, but he’s not stupid. Was he in danger of failing to get the nomination? If history is any guide, he should have been a shoo-in. The Libertarian party nominated less qualified and capable ex-Republicans in each of its last three presidential contests. Amash had a small-l libertarian voting record in Congress.

Saturday

May 16, 2020

Kate Andrews

Stimulus squabble marks a return to politics as usual

Who is the proposed new $3 trillion stimulus package designed to help? If enacted, the bill — which narrowly passed through the House yesterday, with a break in both party lines — would follow from the $2 trillion package passed in March. But it’s not getting past the Senate, at least not in its current form. Despite broad consensus that the first stimulus wave for businesses and families was a necessary emergency measure to help get America’s economy through the COVID crisis, this next round has become increasingly political, looking more like election postering than a thorough plan for the next phase of the pandemic.

Friday

May 15, 2020

Michael Tracey

Do you believe Tara Reade?

Without a doubt, women who level sexual assault allegations against powerful men are often subjected to character assassination and smears.However, evaluating the credibility of a person who alleges that a presidential candidate committed a grievous act of criminal violence is not the same as ‘smearing’ that person.I’m not interested in smearing Tara Reade, who claims to have been raped by Joe Biden. For one thing, I have no particular affinity for Biden. You can go check my archive at The Spectator and elsewhere for numerous examples of articles in which I harshly criticize Biden, especially for his own pattern of deception as it relates to the circumstances of his 2002 Iraq War vote.

Saurabh Sharma

Texas’s traveling economic militias are done with lockdown

TexasAs lockdowns began across America, Texans did what Texans do best. They emptied the shelves of every firearm store in the state.Urban progressives and the pundit class were quick to scorn. But those firearms, and the millions more owned by the people of Texas, are now proving useful. Texans want to reopen their economy and are turning to amateur armed guards in order to do so.A recent piece in the New York Times focused on a tattoo shop in Shepherd, Texas, about an hour outside of Houston. When Jamie Williams’s business was passed over for the first wave of permitted re-openings by Gov. Greg Abbott, she called one of what can only be described as Texas’s traveling economic militias.

Wednesday

May 13, 2020

Amber Duke

Biden busted? Dems and the media circle the wagons over Flynn unmasking

Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell has dropped a massive bombshell in the counter-investigation on Russiagate. In a document obtained by CBS News's Catherine Herridge, Grenell revealed that Obama administration officials sought to 'unmask' Gen. Michael Flynn 48 times after Trump was elected president. Those officials include, among others, Vice President Joe Biden, former UN ambassador Samantha Power, DNI James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, FBI director James Comey, and President Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough. Why is this important? Unmasking isn't illegal — officials with the proper clearance can request the identities of Americans whose conversations are incidentally collected during foreign surveillance.

Daniel McCarthy

When money dies

‘Money for Nothing’ is more than just the name of a Dire Straits hit from 35 years ago. Today it’s the guiding principle of an increasingly wide spectrum of American political thought. Andrew Yang built his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on a call for a universal basic income — a $1,000 monthly payout from the federal government to every adult in the country. When Congress in March fumbled for something grand to do in response to the coronavirus crisis, a consensus quickly settled on sending out $1,200 checks to most Americans. But free money isn’t just an emergency measure or a faddish idea from the left.

Roger Kimball

Andrew Cuomo is a deadly failure

Have we reached peak Cuomo? I think that the climacteric came when the media was aflutter with rumors that the governor of New York wore nipple rings. Alas, it turned out to be only a rumor, or so we have been assured. There are two questions that continue to bedevil Cuomo watchers. The first is whether his handling of the Wuhan Flu is the absolute worst of any governor or only among the worst. The second question is how, given how appalling his leadership has been, he has managed to float along with such high approval ratings (some say 80 percent). As to the first, we have a veritable litany of failure, much of it deadly.