Unintended Consequences?

One of the dangers of even thoughtful policymaking is the possibility of unintended consequences; as I used to tell my students, even the best-intended legislative efforts can create unforeseen “spinoffs” that range from unfortunate to truly damaging. That’s why careful attention to policy details, consultation with people having expertise on the subject, and thorough review of available evidence are all so important.

So what happens when people in positions of authority are incapable of thoughtful policymaking and dismissive of evidence and expertise? We are about to face the consequences of policymaking by ignorant egomaniacs, and Paul Krugman has identified some of the most obvious.

Krugman notes that the new PM of Canada has ordered a review of that country’s plan to buy a substantial number of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets, joining European nations that are similarly reconsidering their dependence on U.S. weapons.

This turn away from military dependence on the U.S. is understandable. America is no longer a reliable ally to the world’s democracies; indeed, between Trump’s turn toward Putin and his talk of annexing Canada and Greenland, we don’t look like an ally at all. Rumors that U.S. jets have a “kill switch” that would allow Trump to disable them at will are probably false, but sophisticated military equipment requires a lot of technical support, so you don’t want to buy it from a country you don’t trust.

He then considered several other emerging responses to the chaos being caused by our mad kings, pointing out that a nation “that can’t be trusted to honor agreements or follow the rule of law has to have monetary as well as political and diplomatic consequences.”

Several of those monetary consequences will be very damaging. Krugman says he’s been exploring the available data, and “U.S. exposure to foreign revulsion looks quite large.”

Military hardware isn’t the only export likely to suffer from our new rogue nation status. Our trade deficit in goods is partly offset by a surplus in services trade, but several of our major service exports will definitely be hurt by America’s turn to the dark side.

One of these is education. Many foreigners come to America to study, attracted by the quality of our colleges and universities. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, they spent more than $50 billion. But if you were a foreigner considering study in the U.S. next year, wouldn’t you be worried that you might find yourself arrested and deported for expressing what the current administration considers anti-American views? I would. So we can expect a hit to higher education, which, although we rarely think of it this way, is a major U.S. export.

Personal travel — basically tourism — was even bigger, more than $100 billion. But you can be sure that we’ll be seeing a lot fewer Canadians this year and next. And it won’t just be Canadians reconsidering their plans.

Media is already reporting cratering European tourism.

Krugman admits that he’s much more worried about Trump’s threat to our democracy than his bad economic policies. He also notes that– even in purely economic terms–the self-inflicted damage from tariffs and deportations is likely to outweigh the costs caused by other countries’ loss of trust in the United States. That said, those costs are real.

One way to think about this is to say that Trump is doing to America what Elon Musk is doing to Tesla, destroying a valuable brand through erratic behavior and repulsive ideology. Did I mention that Tesla sales in Europe appear to be cratering?

True, there are differences between a private business and a nation-state. I don’t think people visiting Tesla showrooms are subject to random arrest, or that Musk will kill your car if you say something he doesn’t like (although to be honest I’m not entirely sure on either count, especially since Musk seems to be running much of the government.) On the other hand, Tesla depends a lot more on buyer goodwill than the United States as a whole does.

Still, Trump’s belief that America holds all the cards, that the rest of the world needs access to our markets but we don’t need them, is all wrong. We are rapidly losing the world’s trust, and part of the cost will be financial.

I think it’s unlikely that either of our mad megalomaniacs considers the probable or improbable consequences of their actions. The hard core of MAGA cultists will refuse to acknowledge even the outcomes that negatively affect them (and the data suggests that Red states will likely bear the brunt).

We can only hope that a sufficient number of “softer” Trump supporters will realize that the costs of voting their racism have become too high.

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Can Trump/Musk Take Us Back?

At the base of the Trump/Musk war on American values is the question whether the cultural progress we’ve made really can be rolled back–whether the effort to excise references to women and minorities from government websites and bully corporations and universities into abandoning “woke” DEI efforts can successfully return the country to White Christian male dominance. No matter what other excuses are offered by Trump voters, it is that goal that elected Donald Trump.

Call me Pollyanna, but I don’t think it will be successful.

I don’t want to minimize the significance of Trump’s assault on our government and our Constitution–an assault conducted by a senile, intellectually-limited and very greedy man. (His elevation to an office for which he is manifestly unfit was a result of the MAGA bigotry he very clearly shares, but it facilitated his increasingly overt corruption. Want a favor from this autocrat? Buy enough of his “meme coins” and I’m sure he’ll be favorably disposed….)

I understand that what we face is frightening.

That said, America’s culture really has moved on from the bad old days. I’ve lived through the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement and the sexual revolution, and I can attest to the fact that the social environment we inhabit today (at least in cities…and probably even in most rural precincts) is considerably different than the one I was born into.

I thought about how far those changes have taken us when I went with members of my (mixed religion) family to a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at Indianapolis’ Athenaeum–a magnificent edifice that once served as home for our city’s pro-Nazi German American bund. It was a mob scene of Black, White and Asian folks wearing green, and I couldn’t help thinking how far the Irish have come from the early days of Irish immigration, when native-born “real” Americans criticized Irish immigrants for  their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their religion, and their presumed capacity for criminality and violence. (Sound familiar?)

Today, Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds–including our local German establishments– don green clothes and drink green beer to celebrate St. Patrick’s day.

It isn’t just the integration of Irish and German immigrants. Over the past half-century, Blacks and women have become increasingly prominent parts of the workforce and the political world, intermarriages between people of different races and religions have soared, gay folks have come out and married…and while we’re still adjusting our attitudes about people who identify as trans, understanding and acceptance are infinitely higher than they once were.

That cultural progress has produced major changes in both law and public opinion. As the Brookings Institution has noted, it’s not 1968 anymore. “Seventy-six percent of Americans now say that discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities in the United States is a “big problem,” including 57% of conservatives, 71% of whites, and 69% of whites without college degrees. Pew Research has found that  large shares of Americans recognize the existence of discrimination against minorities. “About eight-in-ten see discrimination against Muslims and Jews, as well as against Arab, Black and Hispanic people.” That percentage is considerably higher than those who believe–with MAGA and Donald Trump– that efforts at equity  discriminate against White Christians.

The electoral successes of MAGA Republicans would have been impossible but for the frantic resistance of  White Christian Evangelicals to these cultural changes. While the rest of us have been going about our daily lives, accepting (and often applauding) the changes in the culture, White Christian Nationalists have mounted a determined resistance. They are not a majority of Americans, but the real majority–the rest of us– have large differences in ideology and political identity. The cultish coherence of MAGA’s resentments and anger have allowed them to amass far more power than their raw numbers would entitle them to.

THE question that confronts us now is whether those of us who applaud–or at least accept– America’s social and cultural changes can resist the Trump/MAGA efforts to return us to a much meaner time.

Can those of us in the majority– Black and White, Hispanic and Asian, Jew and Muslim and atheist, the civically active and the politically apathetic– come together and resist the intense rage of the White Christian Nationalists? Can we ignore our very real differences and work together toward the shared goal of protecting the American Idea and restoring constitutional government?

If we can all be Irish on St. Patrick’s day, this Pollyanna thinks we can.

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Doonesbury Understands What MAGA Doesn’t…

I tried to reproduce last Sunday’s Doonesbury cartoon in lieu of today’s post, but my digital skills weren’t up to the task, so I will have to describe and discuss it instead.

The comic strip’s radio personality, Mark, gets a call from Al Gore. The conversation focuses on what Mark says was Gore’s “jam”–government efficiency. Gore explains that it had indeed been his “job one” as Vice President, and that in the space of seven years that effort had reduced the federal workforce by 426,000 workers, consolidated 800 agencies and eliminated 640,000 pages of rules.

When Mark says “Wait. Why didn’t I know any of that,” Gore responds “You didn’t notice because the process was carefully planned and responsibly executed. It never disrupted essential public services. Compare that to now.”

As I read that comic strip, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. (Okay, I did both.)

In just a few panels, Gary Trudeau made an essential point: if your intent was really to improve service delivery, to root out fraud and waste (and in most bureaucracies, very much including government, waste is a far more prevalent problem than intentional fraud), you would go about that task carefully. Responsibly. You wouldn’t approach it with what Paul Krugman has aptly called a group of Dunning-Kruger interns and a meat-ax.

You would take the time to determine what each agency did, and take care not to lose valuable institutional knowledge with your layoffs and firings–especially when that knowledge was essential to the management of things like atomic weaponry. You would learn the vagaries of government’s (frequently antiquated) digital systems, and avoid jumping to incorrect conclusions, avoiding ludicrous and easily debunked assertions that millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security checks.

It has become abundantly clear that Musk’s manic exhibit with a chain-saw was a perfect representation of his real motive: to destroy the federal government–what the Rightwing crazies call their war against “the administrative state.”

I think there are two distinct reasons for pursuing that destruction, although they are not mutually exclusive. (Musk rather obviously falls into both categories.)

One motivation for the chain-saw approach is the naive and increasingly divorced from reality belief that we don’t really need government, except perhaps to maintain law and order. All those regulations that–among other things– keep your groceries safe to eat, prevent your bank from ripping you off and keep your airplane from crashing, and all those silly programs that do things like feed schoolchildren and support cancer research–and especially all those intrusive rules that prevent you from discriminating against people who have different skin colors, genders or religions–all of that activity is an unnecessary intrusion on your individual rights.

Once Musk bought Twitter and turned it into the cesspool of bigotry and ignorance that is now called X, his belief that government should operate minimally– and only for the benefit of rich White men– became clear. (As if we’d failed to notice..)

The second motivation is greed. We’ve seen the billionaires “bend the knee” to an administration that is hell-bent on destroying the economic system that facilitated their acquisition of wealth, evidently in the belief that when markets crash and they are free of regulations and that pesky rule of law, they will be in a position to buy low. (Their accompanying belief that they will be able to sell high after a time, however, is fatally flawed–stock values are unlikely to rebound in the absence of a stable democratic society, just as America’s reputation as a reliable ally is unlikely to recover in our lifetimes, if ever.)

Sometimes, uncomfortable truths are better conveyed by humor than by the efforts of would-be pundits writing blogs like this one. People of a certain age still quote a very famous Pogo strip for an essential insight: We have met the enemy and he is us.

The question we are now facing is: how many of us are willing to confront that particular insight? How many of us are willing to accept the unavoidable inefficiencies and annoyances that come with a government able to serve us all–and to fight for its preservation?

I guess we’ll find out…..

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We The People

Wednesday night I attended an “Empty Chair” Town Hall, and I was absolutely blown away–in a very good way–by the event.

I was one of three people who “kicked off” participant testimonies with brief descriptions of what we are currently facing. My assignment was to explain why DOGE and the majority of Trump’s Executive Orders are unconstitutional; the other two addressed assaults on Medicaid and Women’s rights.

Here’s what I said:

Under the Constitution, Congress has exclusive power to raise revenue and “pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”  The Appropriations Clause states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” DOGE has never been authorized as a government unit of any kind, and it is exercising financial decision-making that the Constitution vests exclusively in Congress.

Accordingly, every decision DOGE has made and is making is illegal and unconstitutional until and unless ratified—or more properly, authorized in advance– by Congress.

Most of Trump’s increasingly incoherent, petty and autocratic Executive Orders are similarly unconstitutional. Most of them violate the Separation of Powers—a structural element fundamental to America’s constitutional system. The most blatant example was his effort to use an Executive Order to overturn birthright citizenship, which was established by the 14th Amendment. A president cannot amend the Constitution via Executive Order.

An Executive Order is defined as a written directive signed by the president, that orders agencies of the federal government to take specific actions in pursuance of the Executive’s duty to ensure that the laws of the nation “be faithfully executed.” To the extent that such orders apply to matters not properly within the Executive’s authority, they are legally unenforceable.

Trump’s disdain for the Constitutional limits on his authority have plunged the nation into a full-blown Constitutional crisis.

Following those first, very brief presentations, some sixty people (out of the nearly 600 in attendance) lined up to address that empty chair. They were a cross-section of ordinary Americans (not a “coastal elitist” to be seen)– working class folks, a mixture of young and old people, retired folks– and they were amazing.

Don’t take my word for it: here is a link to the recorded livestream.

The citizens who turned out on a week-night (and presumably those watching via the livestream) wanted Todd Young to know that they are angry at his lack of a backbone, and his failure to live up to the oath of office that he took both as a Marine and as a Senator. They wanted him to understand how this rogue administration’s attacks on government are harming Hoosiers–the shutdowns of mental health services, the refusals to pay funds legally due to local nonprofits, the disregard of Free Speech and due process guarantees, and especially the persistent, vicious assaults on America’s diversity.

The people addressing that empty chair were passionate, but more significantly, their charges of malfeasance were accurate. They’d done their homework. The people who attended that Town Hall were the epitome of the “informed electorate” that sustains democratic regimes. When I left, I felt more positive than I have since the election.

The Town Hall’s organization by the Central Indiana Indivisible Chapter was flawless–there were volunteers directing traffic (which significantly overflowed the church’s large parking lot); and others inside directing attendees, managing microphones and herding the people waiting to testify. The crowd was more than just energized–attendees applauded speakers, booed references to Trump and Musk, and clearly demonstrated their intent to protect the America they value–an America where every person is (at least theoretically) valued.

The minister who welcomed the crowd emphasized that message, insisting that “Everyone is welcome here,–we don’t care what color you are, we don’t care who you pray to or whether you pray, we don’t care who you love. You are valued and welcome here.” Several of those who spoke made a similar point: America is a land of immigrants, a “melting pot” (or “tossed salad”) of diverse folks–and that is our strength. That is what makes America great. That is the beauty of We the People, and we will fight to retain it.

If Senator Young is too weak and intimidated to join the fight for America, the people in that Town Hall will find someone who isn’t weak and intimidated to replace him.

If you weren’t there, I really, really hope you will watch the recording. We the People are beautiful.

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What Real Conservatives Understand

Bret Stephens is a conservative columnist for the New York Times. He recently penned an essay titled “Democracy Dies in Dumbness”–a take-off the Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That essay made two points I’ve tried to convey here.

Genuine conservatives, like Stephens, are appalled by what is being done by the MAGA radicals who are routinely identified as conservative. MAGA, Trump and Musk are anything but, and to label them such is an affront to actual conservatives. The second point–and the one amply documented in Stephens’ essay– is that the most obvious element of this horrific administration is its profound stupidity.

A lot of people, especially well-meaning “libruls,” strain to find some nefarious logic to the disasters Trump is perpetrating in Washington–some evidence that he’s an “evil genius,” or at the very least operating with some sort of intent, misplaced though it may be. To this I say bullfeathers! He’s ignorant, very stupid and also very clearly mentally ill. (I leave it to each of you to decide what that says about those in his devoted MAGA base.)

Stephens detailed much of the ignorance:

It used to be common knowledge — not just among policymakers and economists but also high school students with a grasp of history — that tariffs are a terrible idea. The phrase “beggar thy neighbor” meant something to regular people, as did the names of Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley. Americans broadly understood how much their 1930 tariff, along with other protectionist and isolationist measures, did to turn a global economic crisis into another world war. Thirteen successive presidents all but vowed never to repeat those mistakes.

Until Donald Trump. Until him, no U.S. president had been so ignorant of the lessons of history. Until him, no U.S. president had been so incompetent in putting his own ideas into practice.

Stephens labels Trump “a willful, erratic and heedless president,” and says he’s prepared to risk both the U.S. and the global economy “to make his ideological point.” I disagree with him only on his evident belief that Trump has an “ideological point.”  I really doubt that Trump could spell ideological, let alone that he possess an articulable “point” he wants to make. He acts solely out of grievance, racism, anger and an insatiable desire for attention–as the inconsistency of his impulsive and damaging actions show, there is no coherent belief system motivating any of this.

Stephens does take on the obvious stupidity:

The Department of Government Efficiency won’t end well. It is neither a department nor efficient — and “government efficiency” is, by Madisonian design, an oxymoron. A gutted I.R.S. work force won’t lower your taxes; it will delay your refund. Mass firings of thousands of federal employees won’t result in a more productive work force; it will mean a decade of litigation and billions of dollars in legal fees. High-profile eliminations of wasteful spending (some real, others not) won’t make a dent in federal spending; they’ll mask the untouchable drivers of our $36 trillion debt: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.

Just as you don’t cure cancer by shutting down cancer research, walking away from NATO won’t achieve greater security for anyone, including ourselves. What passes for Trumpian foreign policy has already done incalculable damage. His “policy”– centered on cozying up to Russia– is monumentally stupid; as Stephens notes, what Trump has achieved internationally is a Russia that sees even less reason to settle, a Europe that sees more reason to go its own way, a China that believes America will eventually fold, and a once-again betrayed Ukraine that will have even less reason to trust international guarantees of its security.

In his last paragraph, Stephens makes a point with which I entirely agree.

Trump’s critics are always quick to see the sinister sides of his actions and declarations. An even greater danger may lie in the shambolic nature of his policymaking. Democracy may die in darkness. It may die in despotism. Under Trump, it’s just as liable to die in dumbness.

I just hope that there will be a government to salvage when we finally eject Trump, Musk, the clown show they’ve assembled and the sorry bunch of Christian Nationalists and elected invertebrates who continue to enable them.

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