Organizing Principles

Trump signs an Executive Order that bars all refugees from Syria, and all people from 7 majority Muslim countries from entering the US. Because of the rushed nature of the order there is widespread confusion about who it affects, including people with duel citizenship, valid visas and green card holders: How Trump’s Rush to Enact an Immigration Ban Unleashed Global Chaos

Breaking with all precedent that has separated domestic political calculations from foreign policy and national security, Trump’s chief political advisor and strategist Steve Bannon is given a permanent seat on the National Security Council: Bannon Is Given Security Role Usually Held for Generals

Here is a good Washington Post survey of Bannon’s anti-globalist and anti-Muslim world view, based on many hours of tape from his Breitbart radio show.

Trump opens a diplomatic rift with Australia-a key military ally-on a phone call with Prime Minister Turnbull where he says “This was the worst call by far.” He was apparently set off by Turnbull requesting that Trump honor an agreement to resettle some refugees from Iraq and Iran that Australia is holding in camps. The situation in these camps are dire and are becoming a domestic and geopolitical problem for Australia. You can read about the miserable conditions of these camps, including suicides and murders, in this Roger Cohen piece.

The rift with Australia was so sever that Republicans in Congress, including John McCain, had to reach out to Australian diplomats to reassure them of American support and affinity: Congressional leaders scramble to reassure Australia after testy Trump phone call

Since the election the GOP has built up a steady momentum toward pulling the plug on Obamacare, but this may be the week that the health care law was put back on life support. Republicans in Congress are beginning to openly express the idea that they will not repeal it: G.O.P. Campaign to Repeal Obamacare Stalls on the Details. And conservative writers are sounding less triumphal than they were a couple weeks ago and more pleadingly desperate about a way forward, like in this Ramesh Ponnuru piece for National Review.

Finally, several writers laid down their markers about what kind of president Trump will be now that we’ve seen him on the job for a week and half. Elliot Cohen writes that “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better.” David Brooks predicts that Congressional Republicans will eventually have to side against Trump, calling him “a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.” David Frum paints a dark picture of America in 2021 after a Trump has succeeded in building an autocracy. And Ross Douthat explains why Trump’s incompetence and populism’ s blindspots means he will fail to build much of anything except a unified resistance movement.

In his first few minutes as president, Trump gave a dark Inaugural Address about “American Carnage.” Some conservative writers were not impressed: A Most Dreadful Inaugural Address

The next day he delivers a “a campaign-style, stream-of-consciousness airing of grievances” to members of the CIA in front of the hallowed Memorial Wall. Watch the full speech here.  Some intelligence officials were deeply offended.

In the face of Trump’s false claims about his crowd sizes and millions of people who voted illegally, the news media struggles with Calling a Lie a Lie , as explained in this survey of Trump un-thruths by Dan Barry.

The “biggest diplomatic rift between the U.S. and Mexico in decades” erupts when the President of Mexico cancels a planned trip to meet Trump after Trump again insists that Mexico will be coerced through trade policy to pay for the boarder wall.

Let me preface this by saying that I attended the Women’s March in NYC. I won’t say I marched–I stood in a crowd for three hours. All those people you saw on TV who actually marched devoted 8 – 12 hours of their Saturday if not more just to be able to move through the clogged streets. They were committed. Here I want to offer some perspective: David Brook’s column offers a wake up call for those of us who hope that the Women’s Marches will change our political situation. In short: though our bubble felt a lot bigger on Saturday, we are still inside of it. A few points:

1/5: Do not over interpret the crowd sizes (i.e. we must to spread impact outside of the cities). The fact that many hundreds of thousands of people showed up for a march against Trump in major cities should not be all that surprising. While it is true that Trump only just barely won the election (by 77,000 votes in three key electoral college states) he was still the preferred candidate in 84% of the nations 3,144 counties. Hillary only won 487 counties, compared to Obama’s 689 in 2012. Yes she got more total votes, but the votes she needed and did not get were outside of the big cities. A lot of people didn’t know that these marches were even happening last weekend. If people are going to travel an hour or more to attend one of these, maybe next time they should attend events in small to medium sized towns outside of the reach of a metro line. (By the way, it is also not surprising that Obama’s inauguration was larger than Trump’s considering that it was held in a city Obama won by 92% and Trump only got 4%.)

2/5: Look inside yourself and be sure that you can articulate your own sense of patriotism. If you can’t, then when you march you are just venting your own negative emotions. Stay home. We don’t need you. Yes, Im talking to you, my fellow Iowa City resident flag burner.

3/5: Take off the ‘pussy‘ hats. It is perfectly understandable and fitting that the first Trump protest is a spectral image of the first woman president Inauguration we all thought we would be attending. But if this movement is to grow, we will need a symbol that even Trump voters can get behind: the 42% of women (53% of white women), the 29% of Latino voters, and for that matter the 53% of male voters who all supported Trump. This symbol needs to be general–rooted in a larger national theme, not narrow identity. It should be catchy and a little silly. The tea bag is already taken, but it’s a good model. After all, within a couple years of its introduction, there were over 60 new members of congress who were legislating as members of the Tea Party.

4/5: The political activism of the Women’s Marches should begin to direct its energies toward a specific political party, probably the Democrats. As Brooks wrote in his advice to/critique of the marchers: “Sometimes social change happens through grass-roots movements — the civil rights movement. But most of the time change happens through political parties: The New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution. Change happens when people run for office, amass coalitions of interest groups, engage in the messy practice of politics.” Maybe my political imagination needs expanded, but I just can’t think of another model for what we need than the Tea Party: A grassroots movement (which became heavily funded by the donor class) that galvanized opposition to a sitting president and his party’s control of congress. They were not agnostic about political party. They were GOP all the way, unless they were threatening to supplant the GOP with a new conservative party. This was so effective that even today, the Tea Party Caucus will likely be the deciding factor in how much Trump gets through congress. If anti-Trump activism doesn’t get new people elected to Congress in 2018 it will all have been for not.

Final Thought on the Women’s March: What is the cause all about? Were we all just venting our frustration and fear? Is there a political objective we can rally the country around? What will be the message? It’s not clear to me. And after reading the organization’s Unity Principles I’m more doubtful that the politics behind the Women’s March will gain traction or grow a movement. If you read the list you will see a greatest hits of the Hillary Clinton campaign themes, which just lost a national presidential and congressional election. Fresh thinking may be in order.

This week, the Republican talking point is that Obamacare will collapse all on its own because it is not sustainable. Therefore it must be repealed. A second argument you are beginning to hear is that Obamacare is such a disaster that the aftershock of repealing it (market chaos, premium spikes for everyone) will be the fault of the law itself–and Democrats–not the fault of the repeal…. Hmm.

For now, let’s take them at their word that they actually want to replace the law so to mitigate the disruption of repealing it. If they really mean that, then we all need to be fully aware of the positive things the law actually accomplishes so we can measure whether GOP “repeal and replace” is worth the trouble. (The other option of simply fixing the current law appears to be off the table for now.)

Some facts to keep in mind during the debate:

• 10.2% of Americans have insurance through Obamacare–over 20 Million people
• Historic low number of uninsured: Only 10.9% of Americans are uninsured, down from 17.1% in 2013.
• Only 5% of children are now uninsured, and the percent of Poor/Near Poor and Hispanic uninsured have both been cut in half since Obamacare went into effect. (See the graphs on this CDC report.) If Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, are they willing to put a program in place that will cover this amount of people? Or will they say it is not worth the cost?
• Rate Increases: rate increases are coming for some people who get insurance through the Obamcare marketplace, but only 3% of Americans who receive unsubsidized insurance will be affected (see the chart further down in this link). If the main evidence of Obamacare’s imminent collapse is rate increases, how can hikes that only affect 3% of the country be considered a collapse?
• Maybe you’ve heard Republicans blame ALL recent employer-based insurence rate hikes on Obamacare–as if insurance rates never increased before the law went into effect. Yes, rates are expected to go up over 6% this year, which is high but not as high as it was in the 90s and 2000s with double-digit increases. According to one survey, post-Obamacare increases have been 3.1% compared to 5.6% in the 10 years before the law. Repealing Obamacare will not stop insurance rates from rising, and doing so may make rates rise faster and higher.
• 80% satisfaction rate of Obamacare recipients. Republicans seem to want to save people from a terrible service that users overwhelmingly approve of.

• There were 300,000 sign ups for Obamacare in the week after Trump’s election, which is tens of thousands more people than in the same period last year. The enrollment period will continue until 11 days after Trump’s Inauguration. Many people are flocking to a program that Republicans argue nobody wants.
• Bending the Cost Curve: Healthcare costs are rising much less steeply than they were before Obamacare:
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• Phasing out Fee-for-Serivce Care: Other than providing near-universal coverage, the other main goal of Obamacare was to replace the fee-for-service economic model with value-based care that incentivizes medical decisions that produce greater health over greater cost. The idea is to heal people in a way that requires fewer hospital visits, fewer tests and treatments, by being proactive, intentional and coordinated. The law created a two bodies–the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Innovation, and the Accountable Care Organization–that empower hospitals and doctor’s networks to develop local solutions. Basically people in the health care industry propose a value-based care program, get it funded, and test the results. For example in Dayton, simply by setting up a phone bank panel of nurses to answer phones calls from certain types of patients who called the hospital they were able to prevent 500 ER visits in 2016. Another Obamacare-funded program that was able to avoid 3,000 ER visits and 1,800 hospital admissions per year. Read about these here.                                                                                               More than a third of Medicare payments to providers are now are for value instead of volume. The entire industry is in the middle of a transition to a cheaper and healthier business model. Any reform of Obamacare should keep this momentum going, not reverse it.

There are three ways for a level-headed citizen to respond to decisions by the nascent Trump administration. These should be applicable if you are a mortified liberal or even a “Yeah we voted for him, let’s see what he does” Trump supporter.

First: The “Smart Move” Alert. This label is reserved for outcomes that will be good and also will work. You might say, “Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, he’s a sane, reasonable institutionalist–smart move.” Or even, “Mattis as Secretary of Defense, he’s a reasonable hawk with a lot of institutional and military knowledge, who has already talked Trump out of torturing people–smart move.”

Second: The “Red Alert” Alert. This is for outcomes that will be bad and also will work. If you care about criminal justice reform, police departments’ excessive use of force against innocents, or drug laws, then Jeff Sessions running the Justice Department is a Red Alert. If you care about health for the uninsured and the stability of the insurance markets, then Tom Price as the Health and Human Services Secretary is a Red Alert. If you care about corporate Wall Street power over the average person, then Trump’s Treasury appointees are Red Alerts.

Depending on your politics, Red Alerts and Smart Moves are probably reversed.

The third approach, however, should be the same for all of us: I call it the “This ain’t gonna work” Alert. This is for sheer incompetence and mismanagement that, while they might muck up any intentional bad or good policies from being enacted, will open the flood gates to many unintended bad things. Hiring a National Security Advisor who was fired for creating a climate of back-biting in his department, and who requested that no one else be hired who outranked him–not gonna work. Hiring the guy who owns the Cubs to help run the Commerce Department because he won the World Series–not gonna work. An economic policy based on promising companies millions or billions of tax-payer money to keep hundreds of jobs in the US–not gonna work. A President who maintains his business ties with his properties–emblazoned with his name–all over the world… A President who doesn’t know that he can’t just accept a phone call from any country that rings Trump Tower to sing his praises, like Taiwan…

I am trying to be optimistic. I really am. But I can’t help but think that the Trump Administration just ain’t gonna work.

It’s been a tough week, but it is time to get back in the saddle.

Some principles as we go forward

1 of 3. Self-care: Plan time with family; plan a vacation; start up that hobby you’ve been putting off.

We’re looking forward to the holidays with family. I’ve already decorated a Christmas tree,  and bought a quart of egg nog, which I usually stave off till after Thanksgiving. We got airline tickets to Columbia and the British Virgin Islands. I’m doing a Roman study: reading a biography of Caesar, Cicero’s In Defense of the Republic, and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall… I’m blogging about each episode of Star Trek The Original Series. This will keep me preoccupied well beyond Inauguration Day.

2 of 3. Plan your information pathways: buy a newspaper subscription

Considering the high stakes of the next few years, I’m feeling the need to keep even more informed than usual–and from diverse sources. In addition to my subscriptions to The New York Times and The Atlantic, I’m adding the following: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and National Review. I’ll be seeking out prominent black and Hispanic/Latino bloggers/writers as well. Any suggestions? It will do us all good to read serious reporting on the economy. And since conservatives are in charge of the government, and there is an open question as to how conservative their new leader actually is, it will be important to keep tabs on how the conservative intelligentsia and policy wonks respond to Trump’s presidency.

As for social media, it’s a question of how much you want to engage, and to what end. I don’t know… Don’t go down any rabbit holes that will waste your time or take your eye off the ball.

3 of 4. Keep an open mind–Talk to a Trump voter.

National elections in a country as big and diverse as ours are mysterious things. It’s almost as if a collective spirit sweeps across the land every four years. There can never be a simple, ironclad explanation for why the country picks one person over another. There’s a matrix of reasons all valid. If you really believe in democracy and the genius of our Constitutional pluralism, then you have to accept that the collective will of the voters always contains wisdom, that there are important lessons about the country that their decision is charging us to learn. If you believe that election outcomes contain wisdom only when your side wins, that’s your prerogative. But it’s better to hear the other side out, just as you’d hope they’d hear you out. This seesaw from one ideological view to the other is going to continue for the rest of our lives–as it was designed–so we better get used to it.

Talk to a Trump voter. They’re everywhere! Even in New York and New Jersey. Trump won 85% of the country’s counties! Don’t debate, don’t interrogate, but interview them. Hear them out. They are not raving, ignorant, racist Troglodytes. I bet whomever you would find would be a normal person that does not harbor extreme views. They might just put you a little more at ease.

4 of 4. Keep your powder dry.

There will be–already is–a firehose of information to react to, to protest, to celebrate. Some things might make you angry or happy, and the compulsion to lash out or taunt will be strong. Hold your fire. We will not know what anything really means, or have a clear idea of what is about to happen until after Inauguration.

If you oppose Trump, protesting and raving now, when there is no specific issue to galvanize the country around, will look too much like sour grapes to those in the middle. We need to be careful about being painted as costal, liberal elites out of touch with the rest of the country, because we will be seen as unreasonable when we have real cause to fight next year. There is still the possibility that Trump will not be as bad as we fear. Hold.

If you support Trump, he and the media narrative is going to press you into service to respond to every attack and perceived slight. Whenever a person of color gets mouthy with the administration or newspapers report on Trump’s business conflicts of interest, be wary of lending your name to Trump’s defense. You don’t know how this is going to turn out either. Hold, hold.

Let’s not fight now over nonsense and innuendo, but instead wait until there is an actual bill or executive order and then try to persuade everybody (Democrat and Republican) to get behind it or fight against it.

It is in your political interest to vote for Hillary, and here’s why. During a Hillary presidency you can participate in activism that pushes her policies more to the left, and if she is still not to your liking in 2020 you can always primary her. You and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders will be on the march. It will be fun, and the most influential the left has been in many years.

If Trump wins, your issues and your passions will be overwhelmed and diluted by the tidal wave of opposition to Trump that will rise up from every group in the country. No one–not even you–will have time to worry about income inequality, college debt and health care when all our activism is focused on Trump’s walls, deportation forces and wars with whoever snubs him. If any one issue becomes prominent in activism it will be minority rights. Black Lives Matter will become the big player, and a Latino Lives Matter will form. And in 2020, the Democrat Party (its voters and its party apparatus mind you) will entertain a leftist candidate like Sanders. They will pick the most moderate, milquetoast, unoffensive candidate available. Because by then they will be facing a deeply unpopular Trump, and will pick the safest path to defeating him. Many in your own ranks will agree with this too. Passions on the left will be muted like they were in 2008. After Trump, there will be little appetite to fight with Democrats. And the leftist holdouts will walk into the voting booth and vote for Jill Stein, and no one will notice or care. The energy the left has generated in 2016 will not be replicated until 2024 or 2028. It does not have to be this way! Vote Hillary!

You should vote for Hillary, and here’s why. A single Trump term will coat your principles in so much horse shit that Republicans will be out of power until the 2030s at the earliest. I know, I know… that’s liberal claptrap, and Trump will make America great again. But you admit that he will be a chaos President. It’s what you are hoping for. Disrupt the system! But you know in your heart–conservative that you are–that disruption is no way to progress. You know that there are scores of ways for the federal government to make even small mistakes that cause grave damage to the country and the world. You know that order is a delicate thing that is maintained by steady, humble leadership. You know that one man in government cannot solve complex social problems, and if he tries, power corrupts and innovation is stifled. More than this, you should know what happened the last time a Republican president flamed out (see Iraq, and 2008 Great Recession). We got eight years of a Democrat in the White House. If Trump wins next week, you know–you know–he will flame out more spectacularly than George W. Bush ever could have. And then your ideas will be discredited. You will get eight or more years of a liberal president–maybe he will even be black, or, Heaven forbid, Latino; he will not be a woman since Democrats will have learned that lesson. Your cries about free markets, and business inovation, and job creation will be met from the vast majority of voters with a shrug. “But you were with Trump,” they will say, if they bother to say anything to you at all. Don’t do this to yourself: vote Hillary. And don’t take my word for it, here is an actual conservative: The Dangers of Donald Trump

To my leftist friends, as you are trying to get your policy shop in order for the next four years, you should seek out ideas in the ballot initiatives some states will vote on next week. Colorado has one for state-wide guaranteed universal health insurance. It is basically BernieCare for Coloradans.

I have a lot of respect for the leftists in Colorado because they are pushing a bold but detailed idea while also being honest about how it will be paid for: “a 10 percent payroll tax would be implemented, with employers paying 6.67 percent and employees paying 3.33 percent. Other non-payroll income would also be taxed at 10 percent.” If the left wants to ever be empowered to enact actual laws from their policy ideas, they need level with the voters about the costs and the benefits.

We are seeing why some prominent leaders on the left have been afraid to do just that. This ballot initiative has only 30% support in Colorado, and is not likely to pass. More than half of Democratic voters in Colorado oppose it. Food for thought as we wonder if the Democratic Party’s problem is that they nominated someone too conservative.

Colorado’s Amendment 69