Politics

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If P.J. O’Rourke Keeps Writing Amicus Briefs, I Will Probably Keep Reading Them!

orourkeI am a fan of P.J. O’Rourke. He has written a lot of good lines. Recently he spiced up everyone’s life when he teamed up with the Cato Institute to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court related to the upcoming case Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus. This is obviously some of his handiwork.

Driehaus voted for Obamacare, which the Susan B. Anthony List said was the equivalent of voting for taxpayer- funded abortion. Amici are unsure how true the allegation is given that the healthcare law seems to change daily, but it certainly isn’t as truthy as calling a mandate a tax.

Poking fun at the Chief Justice in an amicus brief has to be a first. I am familiar with Mr. Driehaus. He is a local politician lost his seat in 2010 to long time Congressman, Steve Chabot. He won the seat in 2008 with the help of President Obama and I guess the thrill was gone for the voters in 2010. I was surprised to learn that it was illegal to lie about politicians in Ohio and even more surprised that Mr. Driehaus sued the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. It makes him look less like a former Congressman and more like a sore loser. This Ohio law forbidding lying is embarrassing. Although I would prefer that people stick to the truth about politicians and issues, I can tell you that it sure has not stopped anyone from lying in Ohio. Everyone has their favorite facts and studies. So we have a law most people ignore that is probably unconstitutional. Maybe the Supreme Court will put the law out of its misery before someone finds a way to abuse it. If they let the law stand the Supreme Court may have a mess that will make the Affordable Care Act look like child’s play to deal with. Sorry Chief Justice Roberts you set the precedent of how to deal with highly political laws. Here is what Ilya Shapiro wrote about the case over at Cato.

Believe it or not, it’s illegal in Ohio to lie about politicians, for politicians to lie about other politicians, or for politicians to lie about themselves. That is, it violates an election law””this isn’t anything related to slander or libel, which has higher standards of proof for public figures””to make “false statements” in campaign-related contexts.

During the 2010 House Elections, a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), published ads in Ohio claiming that then-Rep. Steven Driehaus, who was running for re-election, had voted to fund abortions with federal money (because he had voted for Obamacare). Rather than contesting the truth of these claims in the court of public opinion, Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Commission (OEC) under a state law that makes it a crime to “disseminate a false statement concerning a candidate, either knowing the same to be false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.”

While the complaint was ultimately dropped, the SBA List took Driehaus and the OEC to federal court, seeking to have this law declared unconstitutional and thus enable advocacy groups to have more freedom going forward. The case has now reached the Supreme Court.

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WHO SAW THE UKRAINE INVASION COMING, AND WHO DIDN’T

I had to laugh when I read the @blakehounshell tweet that “Sarah Palin totally called this exact Ukraine scenario 6 years ago…”.  In 2008 he was blogging for the magazine Foreign Policy magazine when he dismissed Palin’s notion with the following statement.

“As we’ve said before, this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

As others have pointed out he was not alone in his view. I did not know why at the time I read this statement but the notion that this was an extremely far-fetched scenario struck me as strange. Today I was reading the post, “Who Saw The Ukraine Invasion Coming, And Who Didn’t”, and it dawned on me that the Russians understand the classical relationship between diplomacy and warfare and the US does not. The ultimate achievement in warfare and diplomacy is to achieve your objective without fighting. Sun Tzu said this a long time ago in The Art of War and later Clauswitz reminded us that “war is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.” If the Russian objective was to re-establish political control of the Ukraine, they have already won. It sure looks like the Russians are the professionals and we are the amateurs in the foreign policy game. Unfortunately this event reminds me of Hitler and the Anschluss of Austria, too.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
”• Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Is the NAACP Engaged in Illegal Partisan Politics?

Last night I watched a video clip on Fox of Senator Tim Scott responding to remarks made by a NAACP leader, Rev. William Barber. Last year I looked at the NAACP and concluded that Tea Party organizations would likely set up political activity guidelines modeled after the NAACP guidelines. They were best example of a 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) organization that is engaged in issue politics and political education while successfully meeting the IRS guidelines for political activity. So I was surprised to hear a NAACP leader engaged in petty partisan politics when the True The Vote versus the IRS issue is a hot issue. The last thing the IRS wants to explain again is how their treatment of the True The Vote organization is not different than the way they would treat other 501(c)(4) organizations such as local NAACP affiliates. Rev. Barber did not talk about voter registration or educating people about the issues. He engaged in a personal attack of an elected official. The IRS has frowned upon this behavior in the past. The parent organization of the NAACP has specific instructions to its 501(c)(4) affiliates forbidding partisan politics and Rev. Barber’s actions seem to be unnecessarily risky in an election year. If the IRS is applying the same standards to all 501(c)(4) organizations then they should be talking to the NAACP today. Rev. Barber crossed the line.

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The Winter of Our Discontent

A couple of days ago I read a Reddit column that reminded me of my regrets  about the second war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was an evil and corrupt man who deserved to be forcibly removed from power. The question was how. Part of me was skeptical that any well intentioned regime change by an outside power would ever work. The US needed to win not only the war but the hearts and minds of the people. Everything had to work perfectly in a place beset with almost intractable political problems. It sounded like a job that was too big and complicated to work. Despite the odds I put my faith that our government could make things right.

Not very long ago we had some well intentioned people in business and government who wanted everyone to have the chance to own their home. Their policies lead to a real estate bubble so big that when it collapsed, it threatened the entire financial system of the United States. Most people felt the financial companies should feel the pain by fixing the problems they created but the problem was so big it threatened the entire financial system. So with reluctant skepticism we embarked down a different path of subsidizing and consolidating the banking system. We combined banks and other financial institutions we would never allowed to happened in normal times. As part of this grand bargain we hoped the money spent on the banks would trickle down to the people who trying to own their home. These were the people whose troubled assets were the focal point of the law. When we fixed this problem the jobs would come back, too. Like most people I put my faith that our government. I wanted this plan to work.

Then there is the Affordable Care Act. It is the centerpiece of the Obama legacy and the greatest accomplishment of progressive politics in the last fifty years. It was supposed to not only expand the health insurance system to more people but it would make health care and insurance more affordable. We were constantly reminded that very few people would be affected by the changes and that if we liked our health insurance and doctors, we could keep them. Once again I felt the pangs of skepticism. Although I wanted this plan to work, it sounded to good to be true.

I look with regret at these three decisions. Even now the general population views them with a mixed sense of success and failure. We do not like to dwell on past failures. In hindsight each decision failed to accomplish its objective so we did something else. With each failure I have become more skeptical that our government can finesse its way through poorly thought out policies. Weapons of mass destruction were not found. Middle class families had their homes and dreams foreclosed on. Affordable health care is still a dream. One of the greatest features of American exceptionalism was our government’s ability to transform bad political policies into workable policies that grew middle class wealth. We took our eyes off of the ball.

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Stuck on Stupid Revisited

I was beginning to think I was too harsh on the State Department yesterday when I called their inept foreign policies Stuck on Stupid until I saw this story in the Business Insider. With the political pots boiling over in the Middle East and North Korea, Mr. Kerry says that climate change will be a focal point of his time in office.

The New York Times reports today that Secretary of State John Kerry is planning to make climate change a focal point of his time in office and wants to pursue a global climate change treaty in 2015.

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Is Our Foreign Policy Stuck on Stupid?

The New York Times decided to stir the pot on Benghazi and in the process showed that after a lot of work they can arrive at the same conclusion of a massive intelligence failure that most of us arrived at two years ago.  Here is a quote from the New York Times editorial.

While the report debunks Republican allegations, it also illuminates the difficulties in understanding fast-moving events in the Middle East and in parsing groups that one moment may be allied with the West and in another, turn adversarial. Americans are often careless with the term “Al Qaeda,” which strictly speaking means the core extremist group, founded by Osama bin Laden, that is based in Pakistan and bent on global jihad.

Republicans, Democrats and others often conflate purely local extremist groups, or regional affiliates, with Al Qaeda’s international network. That prevents understanding the motivations of each group, making each seem like a direct, immediate threat to the United States and thus confusing decision-making.

The report is a reminder that the Benghazi tragedy represents a gross intelligence failure, something that has largely been overlooked in the public debate. A team of at least 20 people from the Central Intelligence Agency, including highly skilled commandos, was operating out of an unmarked compound about a half-mile southeast of the American mission when the attack occurred. Yet, despite the C.I.A. presence and Ambassador Stevens’s expertise on Libya, “there was little understanding of militias in Benghazi and the threat they posed to U.S. interests,” a State Department investigation found. The C.I.A. supposedly did its own review. It has not been made public, so there is no way to know if the agency learned any lessons.

My problem with Benghazi is that it appears to be emblematic of a foreign policy stuck on stupid. Here are some of the questions that remain unanswered.

  1. What foreign policy concerns required Ambassador Steven to ignore intelligence threat reports and conduct business in Benghazi on September 11th?
  2. Does anyone at the State Department understand the concept of fourth generational warfare? Since 1989 we have talking about the “blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian” and we are stuck nitpicking whether Al Qaeda had operational control of the attack. To its credit the NYT complains about this, too.
  3. When I look at our foreign policy in Syria it looks like the Benghazi foreign policy on steroids. Which side are we on? What are our objectives? Would someone please call Putin so we can figure out what the US policy is?
  4. If we look dazed and confused on Syria and Libya, what message does that say to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Is our sheer incompetence leading to more unrest or just more stirring of the political pot? If we do not start showing some foreign policy successes in this area maybe it is time for us to cut and run and leave the policing of the Middle East combatants to the professionals?
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The Nuclear Option and What It Means to Fixing the Problems with the Affordable Care Act in 2014

One of my many complaints about the Affordable Care Act is that it is primarily a political achievement and the heavy lifting of health care reform was left as a future exercise. Although there have been some political achievements that were translated into good government policy by our bureaucrats, this piece of legislation needed some opposition views to help detour them from changing things that are not broke. This is most evident in the policy that resulted in the cancellation of existing insurance plans. The plans seemed to be working okay and the customers were happy. There was never a good argument put forth why these people had to be the first in line for health care reform. It seems that the Affordable Care Act supporters deliberately went out of their way to make enemies and then had the nerve to gloat about it as “progress”. President Obama’s comment to the GOP sums up the Affordable Care Act supporter’s attitude.

I Won. Get Over It

This attitude leads to a political strategy that reduces good will, trust, and consensus making among our legislators at just the moment these legislators needed to back off from the partisan Kool-Aid and start fixing their mistakes. Instead the Senate embraced the nuclear option and kicked off the 2014 election debate with a bang. The congenial Senate has become more like the House and passing laws to help fix the more egregious problems with the Affordable Care Act in 2014 is one of the many losers. One of the lessons I learned in over thirty years of marriage is that being right is overrated. The Senate has set themselves up for a bitter custody battle and we, the people, have lost hope for a more perfect union.

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A Conservative Argument for Health Care Reform

Last week I was amused listening to quotes by President Obama that said:

If Americans like their doctor, they will keep their doctor. And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it.

The reason that I found these quotes amusing is that this a traditional conservative argument being made by a progressive President. If my notes are correct we find that in Professor Allitt’s first lecture in the Conservative Tradition course, conservatives believe that at the most fundamental level, there is a strong human propensity to keep things the way they are.  Even President Obama realizes that he cannot ignore this aspect of human nature so it should not be surprising that he would use this argument to further his political cause. From this basic conservative idea we can also see why Conservatives have embraced slower, more predictable policies. Progressives are more impatient with change. They want change to happen a lot faster and are willing to trade hardships on “other people” for the greater good of society. Progressive plans generally run into problems when the “other people” is the forgotten, middle class voters. So on one hand the President would like to stick to his progressive health care reform with a “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” attitude. On the other hand he has this nagging fear that the signature accomplishment of his administration will not work and that his own people will unleash a rein of chaos on middle class voters if unchecked. He realizes now that what he once perceived as a loyal and competent administration is actually an insular group of people that is adamant that they can do stupid all by themselves without any help from an opposition party. This leaves the President and his administration in a quandary. They need an opposition party to check their excesses but from the opposition they have seen so far, they would prefer that this opposition is seen and not heard. Oh, how I yearn for the good old days when Republicans were the stupid party! At least they could lead.