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Birthrights & Wrongs

Do you think much about “why?” you are a citizen? For most Americans, it’s simply an existential state: I am, therefore I am an American. Or perhaps, I am an American, therefore I pay taxes. As an expat, citizenship has more immediate resonance. I remain an American citizen: I vote, pay taxes (state & federal), carry a US passport, and retain all the rights and obligations that ensue. I am also a foreigner. I carry a card (my residente permanente) with me at all times that explains my status in Mexico, as Mexican law requires. When I walk around in public, it is quite obvious ‘I’m not from around here,’ partly because I’m too blanco, too tall, and I walk with the quintessentially American ‘I’m in charge here’ stride. Citizenship affects my daily life.

Every nation has to decide how it determines who is a citizen. There are basically two options, known legally in Latin as Jus Sanguinus (the right of blood) or Jus Solis (the right of soil, as in location). In the former, you are what either of your parents is; under the latter, you are what you are based on where you were born. Neither is an absolute condition. Countries with birthright citizenship exempt the children of foreign diplomats, for example, and nations with blood citizenship often place limits of how far back you can claim descent (parents? grandparents? great-grandparents?).

The vast majority of nations today employ blood citizenship, and have throughout history. Birthright citizenship is a fairly new concept, historically, mostly used by new nations in the Western Hemisphere who were trying to encourage a growing population. These same countries also employed a version of immigration which basically allowed anybody (or at least anybody white, back in the day) to enter and then claim citizenship. There was a lot of land, not enough people, so those were the rules. Among the countries that had birthright citizenship and either restricted or eliminated it recently are Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and India.

While it has always been the practice in the United States, the Constitution is silent on the issue. What? Aren’t there people screaming that President Trump’s order is UNCONSTITUTIONAL? Yes, yes there are. The original text of the Constitution has no language about citizenship rules, birthright or blood. The common practice was birthright, but that was all it was: common law. After the Civil War, some people wanted to exclude freed slaves from citizenship, and they claimed the slaves did not belong here as they were brought here against their will (further punishment, what a concept!). The 14th Amendment was written with specific text to cover this case and end the discussion. Here’s the important section:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Amendment XIV, US Constitution, 1868

Some folks on Trump’s side of the argument are trying to make a great deal out of the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” claiming that illegal aliens are not this (subject to the jurisdiction thereof) and therefore their children are not US citizens. The problem with this argument is those illegal immigrants are most certainly subject to our laws, most specifically, they may be deported. One would have to first claim they couldn’t be deported, which is hardly the case.

What about the concept of signing an Executive Order to change a Constitutional principal? Odd business, that, but not as off-the-wall as you might think. First off, many of the people claiming this is completely unacceptable didn’t blanch at then-president Biden’s attempt to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment with a statement, not even a formal order. Also, since the birthright concept is based on multiple judicial rulings (not the original text of the Constitution), generating a court case by promulgating an Executive Order and lawsuits to halt it is perfectly acceptable. Better to begin the formal amendment process in my opinion, but there is nothing to exclude getting a favorable review from the US Supreme Court, either.

As to the legal arguments: An originalist legal interpretation of the Constitution might hold this was specific language dealing with a specific case (freed slaves), and probably does not apply universally. However, the US Supreme Court did rule in the case of the United States vs Wong Kim Ark in 1898 that the same birthright rules apply to the children of immigrants. But hold your horses, that case involved legal immigrants! This is where things get really interesting.

The Justices in that case made birthright citizenship crystal clear, but they also pointed out two obvious exceptions. One was the aforementioned exclusion of children of diplomats, the other children born to a foreign occupying army. Yes, the Supreme Court stated that if a foreign army occupied US territory, and those soldiers had children in that territory, those children would not be US citizens. But why these exceptions? The diplomatic one is a reciprocal courtesy, one of those areas where the need to engage in foreign discourse creates one-off exceptions to normal rules (like the limited extra-territoriality of embassies). But the occupier’s children? Basically, they don’t belong here, which is a value judgment. Thus even the seminal case affirming birthright citizenship has in its majority opinion language allowing for exclusion.

Will the courts use that? Of course the lower courts will hold that the matter is settled, and it is, according to precedent. The question is: is the precedent correct? That is a decision for the US Supreme Court. Overturning birthright citizenship would mean overturning a century of legal holdings, so the odds are long against it, but not impossible, especially if an originalist legal argument can build a simple majority among the justices.

The better question, lost in the pro/anti Trump noise: is birthright citizenship working for America today? There is nothing about the concept that screams “authoritarian” or “racist”, unless you think countries like the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand have those attributes. There is nothing inherently American in birthright citizenship, that is, nothing essential for America’s self-concept. It is a historical legacy, true. But how is it working?

“Au contraire!” Professor David W. Blight responds in The Atlantic. He calls birthright citizenship “A Sacred Guarantee,” and he’s right, with respect to freed slaves. But his argument goes further to suggest what’s really at stake is equality before the law, which is also in the 14th Amendment. But that’s a separate section, unaffected by the citizenship clause. And the Supreme Court has already held that equality before the law extends beyond citizenship to everyone physically in the Unites States, including foreign diplomats, visitors, and even enemy Prisoners of War (an issue which cropped up with respect to the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba)!

Even before the 14th Amendment, America employed birthright citizenship because we wanted to encourage population growth, and not that many people wanted to come. Is that still the case? There are documented cases of birth tourism, where pregnant women from countries like China pay to to gain an entry visa near a due-date, then stay and deliver a brand new American citizen before returning home. The numbers are not large, but I know no one who thinks this is a good idea. There are also “accidental Americans,” people who were born in America to visiting foreign parents who later get a note from the US IRS explaining they owe taxes and fines for not submitting annual returns! And of course the millions of children of illegal immigrants (or the undocumented, if you prefer) present another form of challenge. Try to detain them as a family and the courts have held you can’t hold the children as they have done nothing wrong. Try to deport the parents and you risk splitting up a family. Why do we privilege those who flout the immigration system but then have children, too?

Some suggest dire consequences if birthright citizenship is banished. Much of this is simple hysteria: other forms of citizenship are in force all over the world, so it’s not exactly an unknown concept. For example, the vast majority of people in the USA at the time the law–or its interpretation —is changed would be simply “grandfathered” in as citizens. So, no, I wouldn’t have to go back and prove my parents were Americans. Going forward one would, but that is increasingly the way of things, as anybody who went and got the new REAL ID knows.

The Washington Post recently had a scary story about the possibility of mothers in labor being turned away from hospitals because they don’t have a US passport. They warned about the administrative burden for hospitals having to “affirm” citizenship of newborns. There is even the emotional account of a woman whose premature labor results in her son being born before President Trump’s edict goes into effect, thus “I know he will be able to live in peace in this country.” The problem with such “reporting”? Hospitals can’t turn anyone away for their papers: it’s the law (and it is how many illegal/undocumented persons get emergency room health care). A birth certificate doesn’t need to be issued in the hospital; it was a matter of convenience that can easily be transferred back to the local government. And an administrative burden? Really? Like hospitals don’t require forms and proofs already? Finally, the mother and child story almost prove the point: is this how citizenship should work?

Carlos Lozada (himself a naturalized American citizen) wrote in the New York Times “the practice (birthright citizenship) has become an essential trait of our national character.” What does that even mean? Is it unchanging and unchangeable? Slavery was an essential trait of our national character for ninety years, too.

There is a valuable debate to be had about our existing immigration and citizenship laws. It is necessary and overdue, but must be had without unnecessary inflammatory rhetoric. Very many nations, nations we respect, use blood citizenship. America has used birthright citizenship for a very long time. This issue should not be decided based on who proposes it, or what racist ulterior motives can be ascribed to them. It should be decided on one point alone: what works best for America today?

Some things never change?

As I have highlighted before, I was cursed at birth. I grew up very Roman Catholic, very Irish, and very close to the stadium where the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish play (college football, to the uninitiated). Worse still, during my formative youth, the Irish dominated the sport (three national titles between my sixth and eighteenth birthdays). Apparently it was God’s Will and we all just needed to get on board, which I happily did.

The iconic Golden Dome, with Our Lady atop

Even college football fans know that the Latin saying “sic transit gloria mundi” translates roughly in modern sports jargon as “not so fast, my friend.” Notre Dame had a brief dip and then resurgence under Lou Holtz (one title in 1988, another given away as an attendance trophy to Bobby Bowden and Florida State University in 1993–not that I’m bitter, no, not one bit). Then began what is now thirty years of relative irrelevance. Relative because they are a blue-blood of the sport, who at one time had the most championships, the winningest coaches (two), the most Heisman trophies, the most Hall of Fame players, the most players in the NFL, and the highest winning percentage in the sport. That and myth (George Gipp’s “win one for the Gipper” deathbed speech) and legend (the most famous lede in sports history–the Four Horsemen, Joe Montana and the Chicken Soup game), which resulted in two iconic movies: the Knute Rockne story with some B-movie star named Ronald Reagan as “the Gipper” (whatever happens to him?) and “Rudy” about a guy who made all of one tackle in his “career.” All of which made Notre Dame a brand unique in the sport, so much so they remained independent (never joined a conference) and had their own television rights deal. And everyone either loved them or hated them.

But time marched on, the sport changed, and the Irish did not. Nearly every team is on television every weekend. Boosters became more adept at providing “benefits” to players, whether of the monetary or “other” kind. Athletic Directors decided to go all in at keeping athletes eligible for football rather than insisting on their education. And other coaches and teams simply got better, while Notre Dame didn’t. They occasionally struck lightning and got to a championship or playoff game, only to lose in a lop-sided fashion, which only reinforced that they were no longer elite.

The University of Texas Angels, a spirit group to welcome potential student athletes . . . What?

But I digress. As college football continued to rake in ridiculous amounts of revenue, the fact that everybody was getting rich except for the guys tearing their bodies to shreds on the field finally dawned on the men in helmets (all those helmet-to-helmet collisions take a toll). A series of court cases ensued, and while not all have been settled, the net effect is to allow players to make money off of their “name, image, and likeness” (or NIL), to change teams–I mean schools–without penalty, and to generally ignore most academic requirements.

Some may quibble with this last thought: one group because they say the players never did try to be students, another group because there still are NCAA rules about it . . . but nobody is enforcing them. University of Colorado football stars Sheddeur Sanders (son of coach Deion Sanders) and Travis Hunter (the Heisman Trophy winner) have never attended an in-person class at the school. There are no established limits on how NIL money is awarded, and the teen-aged players involved often have “hand-shake” agreements with shady entrepreneurs, already leading to breach of contract lawsuits. Oh, and the federal government insists (under the Biden administration, so who knows?) that all that money going to players must be apportioned equally between men’s and women’s athletes, not based on who brings in the revenue.

Which leaves the whole sport up in the air, at a time when it is more popular than ever. There is a move afoot by some players to unionize, another by some in administration to have the athletes declared employees. The two largest surviving conferences, the B1G and the SEC are hell-bent to create a competitive structure which (1) locks in their dominance on the field and (2) gives the most lucrative teams/schools more revenue, more opportunity, more power. And the sport just instituted a twelve team play-off, which has proven wildly popular and lucrative.

The interplay between the football players, the coaches/athletic Directors, the conferences, the NCAA (which has become a modern-day Holy Roman Empire: neither National, Collegiate, Athletic or an Administration), the courts, and the federal government will play out soon. Congress intends to get involved, because, hey, that always makes things better! The trends all augur for a semi-professional league which emphasizes talent on the field, marketing, and revenue, while retaining a patina of that quaint old-school student athlete silliness. I can’t wait to see the Hurricanes (affiliated with the University of Miami) making it to the national championship game with a team of ringers led by DeShuan Watson (yes, he still has one-year of college eligibility left, and who cares whether he likes special treatment at the massage parlor?). Color me disinterested.

I began this blog post back in September, after my Irish started the season with a big win on the road at Texas A&M. About the time I got my thoughts together, my team cratered against an opponent called Northern Illinois, officially ending their hopes to make the playoff and reinforcing their irrelevancy. A funny thing happened. The Irish rallied from that low point to win all the rest of their games convincingly, but of course the talking heads said, they would fold again in the playoffs. Instead, they won three tough games in a row, losing only in the championship game to Ohio State.

It was a gritty performance, even coming back in the final after it looked like the game was over at the half. There was much to enjoy about this team, both in their winning and in the way they played. Commentators who grew up hating Notre Dame for their success and their insistence of being different were reduced to admitting they “liked” this team. The Irish were a throwback in style to college football in the old days, even if they were a modern team in terms of NIL, coaching salaries, and transfers. That may be the best that those of us who enjoyed amateur college football can hope for.

Pardon me (!)(?)(#)(.)

At the end of most US presidential administrations, there are a rash of pardons or commutations. The pardon power, the ability to forgive, is among the President’s sole prerogatives and is sweeping (the only enumerated limitation is for crimes of impeachment; everything else is fair game!). There are norms (like not pardoning your family or cronies), rules (a process for people to apply for pardons), and customs (pardons are for crimes already committed, not those in the future). But these are not absolute limits.

Pardons happen throughout a term in office, but most frequently at the end of an administration primarily because they are lousy politics. The person pardoned may be happy, as well as their supporters, but there is usually a court, a jury, and victims who will be outraged. There is also the problem of recidivism: the person you pardon may go out and commit another crime, invariably calling into question why they are free in the first place. Better for that to happen when you’re out of office.

The recent ending of the Biden administration and the beginning of President Trump’s second term yielded a unique situation with many pardons on both sides of the inauguration. And it also yielded another fine example of partisans looking at the wrong thing, leaving a real problem unaddressed while trying to score attention points with hypocrisy.

Let’s start with the new President. Trump issued blanket pardons for the January 6th defendants, calling them hostages and heroes. According to sources who met with him prior to the decision, he was leaning toward the outcome Vice President Vance foreshadowed: pardons for those who were nonviolent. But something triggered Trump (one legacy media source claimed it was Biden’s last pardon actions) and he went instead with a sweeping action.

Needless to say, he was wrong. There are people who were at the Capitol that day that do not belong in prison, but there were many who committed violent or destructive acts. They should not be free. Self-described patriotism is not an excuse for riot any more than deprivation is an excuse for looting. And “Biden did it first” is also not a reason. Trump also pardoned a convicted drug kingpin, apparently believing he was unfairly targeted (I certainly hope so!). And he’s looking at some other cases where police officers were charged with criminal offenses that perhaps represent overreach by local federal prosecutors. These are a mixed bag of actions which are overwhelmingly negative.

In his last days in office, President Biden went on a pardoning spree. He reneged on earlier promises and pardoned his son. He claimed it was to prevent the incoming administration from conducting a vendetta against Hunter, but this was factually incorrect, as the pardon also included offenses to which Hunter had already pled guilty, and was so sweeping as to include anything he might have done over a long period of time. Then he added pardons for a variety of other family members, mostly people who were listed in court records as having been names used on accounts for the transfer of foreign funds into Hunter and James (the President’s brother) Biden’s business dealings. Next were several people (January 6th Committee and staff, General Milley, Dr. Fauci) whom Biden believed Trump may go after in the future. Finally, he issued sweeping pardons for people involved in nonviolent federal crimes, which included drug distribution, financial fraud, and embezzlement.

The truly preventative pardons were probably a good idea, if for no other reason than to protect President Trump from his worst instincts. Many of the other pardons were horrid and specious. Biden pardoned drug dealers directly responsible for many deaths, and fraudsters who ruined many people’s lives. He commuted federal death sentences ostensibly due to his faith, but not for racists (perhaps Biden has his own rite in the Catholic Church). Even people who had defended Biden throughout his tenure called the actions shameful and inexplicable.

If you’re thinking this is a “both sides” argument, your thinking is part of the problem. What we have here is not a partisan issue: it is a bipartisan example of the abuse of power, and “both sides” should address it as such. What do I think?

Leaders in the House and Senate should initiate a constitutional amendment to the President’s pardoning powers. The amendment should limit pardons to past actions and for periods of time not to exceed four years. It should ban pardons within the final six months of a presidential term. Perhaps limit the crimes to which pardons can be applied, or place other conditions on them. I’m sure there are other considerations people of good will can suggest.

Rather than play a game of “I’m outraged by your President’s actions!” while turning a blind eye to mine, we should seize the opportunity provided to address the problem. The process to amend should be limited to the issue at hand and kept as simple and straight-forward as possible, which means it needn’t run for years.

Or we can all go on dunking on social media.

A Trump 2.0 Survival Guide

Within days we will be living again under the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. For some of my friends, this is the welcome return of the MAGA King. For a few, it is a time to wait-n-see what happens next. For still others, it is the dark skies of Mordor looming over America. This post is for the last group.

How to survive another four years of Trump? First off, realize you’ve already lived through eight-plus years. Yes, history will record this period, including the Biden interregnum, as The Trump Era. He has dominated the news cycle, social media, and politics since he rode down the golden escalator at Trump Tower back in 2015. So you’re not at the midway point, you’ve already survived over two-thirds of his reign. Democracy didn’t Die in Darkness (per the Washington Post), although it certainly got a scare back on January 6th, 2021. However you looked at it back then, you and the Republic (a term I never tire in reminding people is our form of government, de facto and de jure) withstood even a once-in-a-century pandemic during his term. You can do this.

What about in practical terms? If you believed all the people telling you Trump=Hitler, you might have noticed many of them were lying to you. I’m not saying you were wrong, just that many of the people who swore that Trump represented the TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) didn’t really mean it, even though they said it. You don’t welcome Hitler into the White House for tea and cookies. You don’t publicly yuck it up at a funeral with Adolph. You don’t go to Berchtesgaden (I mean Mar-a-lago) and kiss the ring of the fuhrer, whether you’re a tech bro, a media talking-head, or Governor of the great state of Canada.

I believe even some of my friends who fervently stated the Hitler analogy didn’t really mean it, either, since voting or donating or social media posting or tweeting is hardly an adequate response to the enormity of an oncoming Reich. The only people who survived the Third Reich with their reputations intact were the ones who took up armed resistance. Even Pope Pius XII (You know, the one some try to smear as “Hitler’s Pope”) organized a secret attempt to kill Hitler. When you cite the greatest enormity of modern history as your analogy, you make extreme demands for action. Not tweets. I’m not calling anybody out to take up arms: just the opposite. Moderate your opposition and align it with fervent, principled work for the policies you do support. And give up the Hitler language.

Go on a social media diet. I don’t know anybody who says “the time I spend on (Facebook/TikTok/X) makes me smarter or a better person.” Do you? If things posted there inflame you, do like the punch line in the old doctor’s joke: Just stop doing it! I shake my head whenever an intelligent, well-meaning friend shares a post/tweet with something like, “you need to read this.” The next tweet with something useful will be the first. And please, don’t be that person who responds to a mega-star and their millions of followers with a back tweet. It’s like the neighbor to walks out their back door and starts screaming at the government: ineffective, weird, and a troubling commentary about the neighbor, not the government.

Review your news choices for bias. There are excellent sources of media analysis here and here, but even these don’t capture coverage bias (the bias represented by what the media source chooses to cover or ignore). I knew well-informed people who denied there was an immigration crisis until New York City screamed “uncle” and the Biden administration admitted to a “challenge.” I knew others who were shocked by Biden’s performance during the debate. You don’t watch media sources from diverse perspectives to change your mind; you do it to learn what the other side cares about and how they characterize the issues. Or you just make it all up in your head. If you don’t believe media coverage bias is an important issue for both sides, you are in deep trouble.

Resolve to ignore any article, post, or message with headlines straight from social-media speak. “Trump pwns the libs” is just as bad as “You won’t believe how Pelosi shocked the Prez.” Such headlines or leaders are the hallmark of click-bait, usually designed to get you excited enough to click through, but as nutritionally empty as a bag of Pizza Rolls (slogan: no animal, mineral or vegetable was harmed in the making of this food product). Long-time media sources that were once reputable (think Time, Newsweek, The New Republic) now join in the shock headlines of the social media influencers. If you only do this, you won’t believe how much better your life will be!

Choose your focus. The MAGA and Resistance movements agree on one thing: Donald Trump is the center of the universe. The sun and the planets, the policies and fate of the nation all revolve around . . . him. For the rest of us, he’s a character: entertaining, vulgar, proud, crude, strong, venal, you name it. If President Trump announces he’s going to lean on Denmark to annex Greenland on January 21st, what exactly does that mean to you? Perhaps it is your Buddhist monk protest moment, or perhaps you wait to see what that really means. I am not totally of the “take Trump seriously but not literally” camp. When he says things, he does so for a purpose. If he says something outrageous and nobody reacts, he may just proceed. But not everything he says demands your attention. Because President Trump loves knowing he is living rent-free in your head, and he will play to that. It’s your choice entirely if you play along.

Avoid TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). Some in the MAGA movement or on the right label anyone or anything not agreeing with Trump as TDS. I am far more selective: I reserve it for those who feel the need to go to any length to criticize him, regardless of reality or simple politics. Let me explain. If Trump says his inauguration crowd is the biggest in human history, you don’t need to go on a social-media jihad using AI-supported photogrammetry to disprove it. You don’t need to assert that Trump isn’t rich because he isn’t the richest person in the world, the continent, America, New York City, or probably even Florida. He’s so rich he keeps incurring additional judgments in the millions of dollars just to keep defaming the woman who accused him of sexual misconduct! You don’t need to claim he is only rich because his dad was, when Trump’s current wealth is oodles more than that of his father. You don’t need to constantly add “first convicted felon” to every mention of his Presidency. A thought experiment on that last one. If Trump’s legal situation were applied to say, George Soros, you might be pointing out that until the appeals process is exhausted, his status is not final. If it was applied to Hunter Biden, you might point out the unique political nature of the prosecution (Joe Biden did!). If it was just some local businessman in the Bronx, you would probably read about it and say, “they took State misdemeanors, added an undisclosed federal charge, and bundled them into a felony? Wha-a-a-a-a-t?” In any case, it’s irrelevant, however it comes out.

Consider the art of the deal. No, not Trump’s book, but the concept. I’ve said all along, Donald Trump is a man of few fixed principals. One of them is he sees himself as a “wheeler-dealer” as my Mother used to say. You offer him a way to be more famous, or rich, or successful, and he might change sides on any issue. Democrats missed this opportunity during his first term, and if you are politically active, consider suggesting to your Representatives, Senators, Governors, whomever, that they try to cut deals. I was only half-joking when I said that Progressives should propose a major increase in the Affordable Care Act under the title TrumpCare. Think he wouldn’t consider it?

Review Paschal’s Wager. Blaise Paschal put forward an argument, called Paschal’s Wager, for belief in God. It is considered by many to be the first historically-confirmed decision matrix. I will give you a Trumpified version of it here: Either Trump is a Hitlerian Dictator, or not. Either you call him one, or you don’t. This forms four quadrants with different outcomes. If Trump is a dictator and you call him out, you get credit for being right. However, he will have you killed, and if all you did was call him out, those who remember you will wonder why you did so little. Outcome: that’s a small upside and large downside. If Trump is a dictator and you don’t call him out, you will suffer personal anguish at failing to do so. Outcome: all downside. If Trump is not a dictator and you call him one, you look foolish and incur the possibility of future “boy cries wolf” problems. Outcome: all downside. If Trump is not a dictator and you don’t engage in calling him one? Normalcy. Outcome: All upside. And greater peace of mind. Mind you, if you assign different probabilities to the two sets of alternatives, what you should choose changes. But if they’re all equal probabilities, which gives you the best life?

Now I know there are still some of my most progressive friends who, if they are still reading, actually take umbrage with my making light of such a serious situation. They feel they alone are correct and that Trump is an Existential Threat. If Trump really is a dictator, then he is the first dictator in modern history to voluntarily give up power. I know he tried to foil the process, but it was a miserable and weak attempt, and then he yielded. And now he is the first dictator to return to office democratically, too (Juan Perón was ousted in a coup, so his return is different). I’m not sure what kind of dictator that is.

Love him, hate him, or just getting the popcorn and watching, he will soon be the President. In conclusion, I reach back to my youth and the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, “What, Me Worry?”

La Posada

Literally, it’s an inn, a place to find shelter for the weary traveler. But it’s also a tradition, brought by the Spaniards to the New World, and an adorable one at that. As the octave of Christmas begins (eight days before), neighborhoods collect themselves and plan their posadas. The point of the posada is to memorialize the visit by Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary to Nazareth, where they were turned away several times before finally finding shelter in a stable.

It’s typically the women and children of the community who organize and run the event. They pick a starting place a few blocks away. They choose which houses to stop at, and which house to end at. They decorate the route and of course the final stop. Children are chosen to play key roles: there is a José and Maria, of course, various angels, a devil (always nearby in Spanish culture and celebrations), shepherds and a group of children with festive clothes and or staffs. If someone has a donkey, it will be pressed into service. Some of the costumes are elaborate, some rudimentary; we saw store-bought halos and staffs made from old broom handles.

The Posada begins!

Maria and José lead the procession, and the children begin singing a song about the first Christmas story. When they reach a designated house, the owners come out, and the crowd and owners engage in a singing call-n-response, the crowd asking for shelter on behalf of the Holy Family, while the owners explain “there is no room at the inn.” This continues for a few houses until they arrive at the designated inn, where the owners eventually agree to let in the group. They serve a snack (often tacos), the kids bust-up some piñatas (candy for everyone!), and a good time is had by all.

Each barrio in the village chooses a different night, and sets the routes. It’s low key, local fun. We marched along with the kids and moms for a while, two tall (six feet) gringos in a sea of locals. We were amazed at how the traffic on the carretera stopped instantly for the entire procession to cross. Even the roof dogs seemed to know barking at this throng was not required. We did have to dodge a rooster and his hens who were quite put out by the size of the group.

All in all, a fun Christmas experience void of commercialism and retaining some part of the original story. Feliz Navidad!

Drone-steria

Imagine you’re sitting on your porch one night, sipping a cold brew, and you see some lights in the distance on your street. They blink, and appear to be moving. They come closer, then the light source turns suddenly and the lights disappear from view. The lights return from another street, and then they stop, just far enough away you can’t see a car, just lights. You’d wonder, “what sort of damn fool is driving like that?” You get out your million watt, survival, combat spot/flashlight, point it toward the lights, and turn it on. The target lights go dark just as suddenly. You jump up and start walking toward where you last saw the lights, but they’re not there. You see them in the distance, speeding away. “Crazy kids,” you mutter and return to your beer.

The next night you see the lights again, only this time you’re sure it’s a car. And it certainly is acting suspicious. It drives around your neighborhood, avoiding any people out on the streets, but seems to back track and turn around randomly in people’s driveways. Lights on, then suddenly off. You call the police, and they seem dismissive. “Yes, we have other calls from your neighborhood. What exactly do you want us to do? It’s legal to drive in your neighborhood. While the car’s lights are weird, they don’t violate any laws. You can turn around in anybody’s driveway, as long as you don’t stop and stay or block it. When we patrolled, we never caught the car driving without lights, speeding, or doing anything else illegal.”

Which is what we face today in America’s drone hysteria.

There are over one million registered drones in the United States, and their distribution largely mirrors the population (more in cities and suburbs, less in rural areas). Until 2023, it was illegal to fly them at night, but now it is legal. They have altitude restrictions (400 ft.), so they don’t interfere with commercial aircraft, and restrictions over certain airspace. Two drone enthusiasts were just arrested for violating the airspace restrictions over Boston’s Logan International Airport. But it is not illegal to fly a drone near a restricted airspace. And it is easy to fly near restricted airspace: if you Google up a map of US military facilities and critical infrastructure (power plants, pipelines, bridges, etc), you’ll see most of the populated areas of the country are full of such space. Believe it or not, private homes are not restricted airspace.

So what’s been happening in New Jersey (among other places) that can’t be explained by a batch of bad THC brownies?

One theory is the always popular space alien visitors. One can never rule it out completely, but there are problems with this explanation. First off, these aliens conquered the physical challenges of light-speed travel, but once they got here, they only have big, clunky drones with flashing lights to investigate us? Maybe this is an interplanetary Amazon run, so they could buy stuff (like drones) here?

The second theory is the just-as-popular secret government agency program. See they’re testing it over New Jersey, because the American suburbs are exactly the kind of environment they expect to be operating in when fighting China. Or maybe Al Qaeda. No, definitely the Houthis. Anyway, why test your secret program with bright flashing lights announcing “hey, this isn’t a secret!”

DHS Secretary Mayorkas demonstrated his usual level of candor and sophistication when he pointed out that some of these drone sightings were in fact commercial aircraft. Which is undoubtedly true. But which begs several questions: how many were commercial aircraft, and what about the others?

“They’re shooting at us, Ethel, get my shotgun!”

Eyewitnesses swear the drones could not be aircraft, as they conducted maneuvers no aircraft is capable of. Of course, that also cuts against the special government program or alien hypotheses, since most people are aware of how sophisticated commercial drones already are today.

A third explanation is more mundane: a stupid government program. Somebody low-down in the bureaucracy got funding for some drones, started testing them without getting higher level approval, and now they don’t want to come out and admit they’ve caused a panic. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (Hanlon’s razor)

And the fourth theory is drone enthusiasts doing what they like and enjoying the notoriety. One cannot discount some people’s need to be noticed, and if this is the case, they are getting way more than their fifteen minutes of fame. Did it start with maybe one or two enthusiasts, then catch fire? Was it coordinated? Doesn’t really matter, as long as they don’t break the law.

I have heard more than one conservative-type talking head ask why we can’t just shoot down the drones. I will write this slowly so such opinion-ators can understand: in America, we don’t just shoot people or things because they look suspicious. Actually, we do, but we regret that greatly. Anyway, the drone-downers were the same people going absolutely bananas when the Biden administration wanted to hire armed IRS agents. What, now it’s ok that DHS is shotgunning the sky?

And best of all: it will take about three milliseconds for the airline pilots of the world to refuse to fly in the United States if we ever start shooting into the sky. When I was in the Army, we practiced air defense, and we could never understand when our Air Force pilot brethren would insist we stop shooting before they flew through the area. The Army view was “big sky, little bullet.” The pilots didn’t buy it. There’s a reason no commercial aircraft fly near war zones, and if the US ever starts shooting down drones, that’s what we would have.

You’ve read this far, so you probably would care what I think. I tend to go primarily with drone operators getting their jollies. And a lot of mis-identification. The question I keep asking is, “why do people care?” As in, what do they think is going to happen? Do they think the drones are spying on them (you’re not that interesting, trust me, and everything you do is already available on social media or your phone)? If you came from planet Remulak, would you really choose New Jersey to visit on vacation?

If the government were secretly spraying some kind of radiation or anti-radiation mist (a very specific allegation out there), would it use bright flashing lights? Or would drone enthusiasts really be so narcissistic as to cause a panic just to get some attention?

I know which one makes the most sense to me. So have a beer, enjoy the show. If you get really annoyed, get a slingshot. If you do shoot one down, that would make a great social media story.

The Peter Principle President

You may not recognize the name, but you’ve no doubt seen the Peter Principle in action. Laurence Peter coined the term in a 1969 book, identifying the fact that many people continue to rise in an organizational hierarchy until they reach the point where their skills are insufficient, and then they fail. But not just fail, also drag down the organization, too. Imagine the top salesman who gets promoted to front-line manager, or the first-level supervisor who focuses just on keeping her employees happy because they will perform better. They get promoted based on past performance, but their skills no longer match the challenges they face. The salesman needs to stop trying to sell and instead manage. The manager must now focus on leadership, which sometimes entails telling people unpleasant truths.

Some people rise to the new challenge, and some organizations try hard to evaluate based on potential as much as past performance. But the Peter Principle remains far too common in our daily lives.

Take for instance our soon-to-be-former President, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.. By all accounts, young Joe Biden was a modest man “with much to be modest about” in Churchill’s memorable take-down of his rival Clement Attlee. He was never a great student, a great athlete, a great leader. As a child of the lower middle class, he keenly felt the uncomfortable disapproval of the wealthy and elite. But he was, however, ambitious to prove he belonged. That combination of ambition and disapproval fueled him to work hard, but also to fib a little. Then a lot. As the good sisters (nuns) taught Joe and me, each sin makes it easier to sin again.

Now if exaggerating your résumé or spicing up your family history were disqualifying for federal office, the halls of Congress would be vacant. As would the White House. And probably several executive suites. But those attributes do tell you something about a person, and no one is seriously questioning Biden’s lifelong problem with this issue: the New York Times even did an exhaustive listing of it.

Despite this character flaw (or perhaps enabled by it), Biden was a successful retail Democratic politician. He used his stories to buff up his “middle class Joe” bona fides, which were already quite strong. He identified with workers, families, and average Americans. He ran for a local council position in 1970 and won, then for US Senator from Delaware in 1972 and won again (in a real upset). Up to this point he was just another promising local politician, but the death of his wife and baby daughter in a car crash weeks after the election made him into a public figure of bipartisan sympathy.

Biden rode that good feeling into perennial re-election in Delaware, while gradually climbing the Senate’s seniority lists. While he strongly advocated for traditional Democratic party positions, he was most well-known for either gaffes (everyone should read this 1974 profile of him from Washingtonian magazine) or extreme changes of position. He said he would approve a Robert Bork nomination for the Supreme Court before supervising the rejection of the same, was against “gays in the military” but later for, was mildly pro-life then pro-choice, was against the first Gulf War but for the second one, pro-integration but anti-busing, a key supporter of tough anti-crime laws which he later called “his biggest mistake.” Depending upon your politics, he was open to change or morally flexible.

What was abundantly clear was Senator Biden always had his eyes set on the White House, and his first attempt came in 1988. He initially garnered some interest before a series of substantiated stories of plagiarism and résumé aggrandizement forced him from the field in a mere ninety days. He returned to his Senate seat and position as chair of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. In the former he presided over the circus that was the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, angering both conservatives for allowing attacks on the nominee and liberals for presiding over the vote that still approved him! In the latter, he built a public reputation as someone knowledgeable in foreign policy matters, despite the memorable quote from Robert Gates that Biden was “wrong on every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Biden remained a powerful Senator who could be reliably re-elected, knew the rules and peculiarities of the institution, and could get things done, but he still harbored desires for the Oval Office. His next opportunity came in 2008. He lasted only as far as the initial Iowa caucuses, where he received support from less than 1% of the attendees. When eventual nominee Barrack Obama needed someone older, “knowledgeable” in foreign-policy, and reassuring to working-class white voters, Biden found himself a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

While the personal relationship between the two men was strong, it was regularly tested by Biden’s frequent gaffes, which the staff referred to as “Joe bombs.” Biden made off-color comments, took policy positions publicly without pre-coordinating them with the President, but served effectively as contrarian voice in policy discussions and a conduit to the Congress. He felt he was in the driver’s seat for the 2016 race until his son Beau died, leaving the family devastated. Joe passed on his golden opportunity, leaving Hillary Clinton to lead the ticket which was upset by Donald Trump.

Fate took a hand as they say, and the 2020 electorate was looking for a normal, routine, sedate adult, while the campaign would be limited due to the pandemic. Joe was free to limit his gaffe opportunities, and President Trump was simply unable to resist tweeting his campaign from one outrage to another. And you know the rest of the story.

That’s the Joe Biden story. Scranton Joe would have made a great mayor, as he was at his best in retail politics. His family wouldn’t have had the temptations it later suffered, and favoritism or small-scale corruption are often overlooked at the local level. He might even have made a very good Governor, for a small state with fewer foreign connections. This would have avoided the frequent foreign policy mistakes. But Joe had some good luck and more ambition than talent, ending up in the Senate. Nothing in his Senate service stood out. When you read more about it, you see countless times where he either temporized, changed positions suddenly, or was simply out of his depth. He was as often criticized by his own party as by his opponents. He certainly never attracted an ounce of support to be President, until Barrack Obama needed someone vanilla to balance his ticket.

Even there, Joe was still the one getting caught on mike about “a big f*cking deal”, or jumping the President to support gay marriage, or being against the Bin Laden raid. Hillary Clinton was always going to be the next nominee, and it was only the shock of her loss, the trauma of the first Trump term, and the tragedy of the COVID pandemic that gave him an opportunity.

Everything Joe did subsequently was consistent with someone over-matched by the office. Rescinding Trump’s border policies en masse without understanding the consequences? Carrying out the Afghanistan withdrawal without adequate planning or an eye to what happens next? Listening to advisers stroke his ego as the new FDR and pump billions into an overheating economy? Temporizing over Ukraine when it mattered most? Insisting he was totally fit for duty when his public appearances clearly showed otherwise? Waiting until the Democratic establishment had to threaten him to withdraw from the race, then literally ending the nominee discussion by throwing his support behind his Vice President? Swearing the justice system is fair and he would never issue a pardon to his son, until he later said it was biased and he did issue one? And remember, we still await the tell-all books from his White House and campaign staffs, which will no doubt be full of more examples.

Setting aside the shock many Democrats and Progressives feel at the election results, nothing about Biden’s tenure was surprising, including how it ended. Joe would have been better a big fish in a small pond, rather than the (un)lucky preeminent example of a Peter Principle President. But that is what he will be remembered as, because that is what he is.

Things I Learned as a Government Bureaucrat

Having served your US federal government for thirty-eight years (yes, I like to say I was press-ganged into service as a child. Back then, they grabbed unsuspecting waifs off the street and took them to DC as laborers), I later realized I knew a lot about how the government really works. Lessons of which the average citizen was unaware. Some of these might be simply informative. A few have applications in regular life. Given the inflamed state of our society today, I submit them for your consideration:

You don’t have to make your opinion known. You can work in an incredibly politicized area like government policy and NOT opine about politics. This used to be the standard practice among the bureaucracy. It started to erode about the time “not my President” bumper stickers started showing up in federal employee parking lots after the disputed 2000 election (Bush v. Gore, and all that). It really took off with the “resistance” to President Trump. Now even allegedly nonpartisan types like intelligence community officials weigh in with their party preferences. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I learned early on in the career that it wasn’t my job to critique who the voters sent into office. My job was to bring my expertise to bear within the limits of “supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, . . . ” and nothing else. Critique policies to the leaders espousing them? Of course. But publicly criticize them or their policies? Never, and don’t get me started on those who privately try to subvert such policies. There is a time and a place for those who resign in protest, but there is a place in hell for eternity for those who take it upon themselves to undermine American policy (looking at you, Eddie Snowden). I know some friends cheer on those who work against leaders they dislike, and see them as heroic. I would only caution those who do so: you do not want federal bureaucrats getting the notion it’s ok for them to decide what the government should do. Because when they do, they’ll decide they don’t need the voters.

The overwhelming majority of the federal workforce is well-meaning, dedicated, hard-working, and competent. There are 2.2 million full-time federal employees, almost 3 million if you include part-timers. It’s the largest employer in the nation, forty percent larger than Walmart or Amazon (the runners up). Because of its size alone, there are good and bad employees. There are executives who strive to keep the common good in mind at all times, and careerists looking for promotions at any cost. There are agencies with a deep sense of purpose, and some which seem to be looking for something to do. There are malingerers already retired-on-active-duty and workaholics who put in eighty-hour weeks (but only get paid for forty).

Federal government employment has some unique qualities. It requires relinquishing certain rights, like the right to campaign publicly for a party or candidate. It insists on strict hiring processes to avoid nepotism, and protects workers from political favoritism. It pays lower-skilled positions at an above-market rate, and higher-skilled positions at a below-market rate. All these things have both positive and negative effects of the workforce.

Note this does NOT include uniformed military members!

One thing that unifies this grand, diverse group is a sense of patriotic purpose leavened with expertise. If you want to clean up pollution, you learn about environmental science and get a job at the Environmental Protection Agency. If you want to protect the border, you study law enforcement and seek work at Customs and Border Protection. When I was working the strategic arms negotiations, across the table at my US policy sessions was a representative from the US Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA). That rep studied international relations (like me), but was dedicated to reducing the number of weapons in the world, while I represented the Pentagon and (at least) more and better weapons for our side. We argued incessantly, but I never believed the other rep had anything but American success as a goal and solid expertise as a means.

I received (courtesy of your tax dollars, ¡Gracias!) loads of training, including two Masters Degrees, a stint at the Federal Executive Institute, executive education courses at Harvard, Columbia, and Oxford, and a failed typing course (still two-fingered, thank you very much!). I got to see all types and manners of federal employees, and they fit the generalization with which I started this section. They aren’t infallible, they get things wrong (see Covid, 2019). But they’re executing laws they didn’t write under the direction of leaders they didn’t choose for people they don’t ever see. That’s why they don’t get paid much, but don’t get fired much, either.

If you think the media just started to portray the government inaccurately, you haven’t been paying attention. When I returned to Washington, DC in 1987, I started that job working on arms control. I had heard all about how dangerous Ronald Reagan was, I had seen firsthand the enormous anti-American rallies in West Germany, read the stories about the Machiavellian characters in the Reagan Administration. Now I was a back-bencher, sitting in meetings with these same characters. And I learned the press was full of shite, as they say in Ireland.

Sometimes the different factions arguing over policy would leak tainted information about their opponents or policies, and the media would lap it up (sometimes gullibly, sometimes willingly, always because it made for good copy, which was that era’s equivalent to today’s “eyeballs.”). Other times some important meeting would be held and nothing would leak, so the reporters just made stories up. Oftentimes the media attributed bad intentions to policies they didn’t like, or questioned the ethics of officials they disfavored. If called on it, they simply offered, “you can tell me the real story” which, of course, would be a leak, too.

All this was happening back when the press publicly described itself as nonpartisan and independent, a fourth estate which kept tabs on the government, and when media was comfortably atop a communications hierarchy that attracted sufficient advertising and revenue. So today when media sources are often at risk of folding, “eyeballs” are everything, and reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post insist that balance or fairness are pro-fascism, mind what you read and believe. Because it’s probably at best partly true, and that’s the worst kind of lie.

Having a friend in the federal government doesn’t help. People sometimes think, “hey, my cousin works for the FBI, maybe she can help me with this IRS letter.” Short answer: no. It seems natural, right? If your aunt worked at the bank, you might expect the bank manager to give you at least an opportunity to talk about a loan. If your sister was with the DMV, you’d expect to not wait in line for your license renewal. But for federal employees, it is against the law to represent a third party (that is, a friend, family member, or frankly anybody) back to the federal government. The key word here is represent, which is a formal thing. Could I call up a friend at another agency and ask some questions about a process, or the best way to do something? Absolutely. But could I call that same person up and say, “My uncle wants to get a small business loan from your agency’s program; how can you help?” Only if I wanted to get fired and prosecuted.

If you want to live forever, become a government program. Every department, bureau, agency and administration has a perfectly legitimate problem it was designed to solve. In some cases, those problems will never be solved; I’m thinking here of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, which we’ll need until after the Parousia. In some cases, the agency evolves to do other things. The Secret Service was started in the 19th century to combat currency counterfeiting (if you watched the old Wild, Wild West television show, you already knew that!). Then President McKinley got assassinated and they got the mission to protect the President. But others simply morph over time. I was against the establishment of intelligence elements in the Department of Homeland Security, because I reasoned that if all they needed to do was be an information conduit, that was better done by technology and rules, nor organizations. If you put analysts and collectors together, eventually they’ll go looking for threats to collect against. And you’ll have an analyst writing about the possibility of Islamic terrorists turning Desert Storm vets into domestic violent extremists, or the dangers of rad-trad Catholics.

Once a government program starts, it is well-nigh impossible to end it. Bureaucracies are full of true-believers who are almost incapable of considering, “what if our mission simply went away.” I was involved with two reductions-in-force and several re-organizations. At more than one position, I offered to eliminate functions or elements. Most of the time, the very offer was met with horror. It was the one thing no one in the workforce or leadership (generally) would consider. So you have to have an external forcing-function if you ever want to reconsider what the government is doing and how much it is spending.

Related to the previous point, the federal government is a hardy, perennial, invasive crop. It thrives almost anywhere you plant it, and it tends to spread. If your agency works to clean the soil, eventually someone points out that the water is dirty, too, and dirty water endangers the soil, so you need to clean it too. Then the air. Then emissions, then second-hand smoke, then bovine flatulence. Each step seems incremental and logical at the time, but in the aggregate it makes one wonder where it stops. Because it never does. And of course it takes a few more federal government employees to do the new missions.

There are some things only the federal government can do. Even in those areas, the people and their representatives must take care when charging the federal bureaucracy with a mission, keeping in mind the traits I cited above. The bureaucracy has a natural tendency to want to solve problems, but that can be a problem unto itself. The federal government is neither a deep-seated conspiracy (the “Deep State”) nor a Confederacy of Dunces. It’s patriotic Americans showing up and doing a job. Some good, some less so. And everything they do has been approved by both the Congress and the White House, and sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Next time you want to scream, “who put these clowns in charge?” remember: you did, I did, we all did.

(Their) Crime and (your) Punishment

What is the first duty of government? Security. International law cites that for a government to be recognized as legitimate, it must effectively control the territory it claims (international security). And for a government to remain legitimate, it must provide security for the citizens it claims to represent (domestic security). So crime (the amount of it, the types of it) is always a political issue.

You would not be wrong if you felt uncertain about the state of crime in America today. Almost sixty percent of Americans say crime is increasing. There are many people, most of them politicians, telling you that the data prove crime is at an all-time low, or crime is rampant, or you’re a racist for even being concerned about it. The first two are right; the last one is entirely up to you. Let’s dig in to the issue to get past the spin and see what’s really happening, because (1) it’s an important issue and (2) it’s a great example of how statistics can be used for good or ill!

There are two sources of crime data for America, both of them in the Department of Justice (under the Attorney General): the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS data is compiled by a random survey method of Americans, the FBI uses data reported by over 18,000 American law enforcement elements (everything from State Police to Sheriffs to tribal organizations). Comparing the two, we learn that only about half of all crimes are reported (the BJS data is twice the FBI data!). Both data sets tend to move in the same direction (crime overall and types of crime vary in the same way, that is for example, less murder, even if we don’t know for sure the total number of murders).

What do we know for sure? Only a little. First, while the FBI counts crimes and the BJS has a survey, the fact that almost half of all crimes go unreported means our data can only be used in a general way. The apparent specificity of the FBI data is undermined by several factors. Local authorities do not have to report to the FBI. There are inducements to do so, but no true forcing mechanism. So some do and some don’t. Also, while the FBI has rules for how to report, there is some subjectivity. “The kid who threw a rock through the window of the only black-owned business in town. Was that vandalism or a hate crime, too? Did we have to charge it? What if it qualifies as a felony (by cost) but we charged it as a misdemeanor?” You get the point. On top of this, the FBI recently switched its data system for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), so some agencies stopped reporting, then restarted, others joined, some left. None of this is best practices for sound data. The phrase among statisticians is “garbage in, garbage out.”

Still, there is a principle in statistics that if you are sampling data, it is unlikely you’re only getting the outliers. So the data are good enough for general trends. When Presidents say “violent crime is down 35% under my administration,” they are at best fibbing. They might be able to claim it is down (35% is pretty large to be an outlier), but in no way should the data be taken as that specific. What are the basic trends in the data?

Pew Research helpfully captured the major trend lines in crime statistics

No one can mistake the trend lines: rates of property crimes and violent crimes are both way down from thirty years ago. The line zigs and zags, meaning it could go up in a given year, like it did during the pandemic in 2020. And local conditions vary: Chicago had a murder peak for a year or two before things calmed down. Yet overall there are far fewer violent crimes than before.

Yet most Americans believe crime is getting worse. How can that be? Statistically, you are extremely unlikely to be a victim of violent crime, and very unlikely to be a witness of one. You are somewhat unlikely to be a victim of property crime, and you are just unlikely to be a witness of one. Which is to say some crimes are more common, and more of us witness them. When you get to the point of knowing someone who experiences or witnesses such crimes, the probabilities begin to switch from “unlikely” to “likely” because you keep increasing the number of people under consideration.

And then there are “crimes of disorder.” These are the actions like public intoxication/drug use, prostitution, indecency, vandalism, petty theft, shoplifting, aggressive driving, fare-jumping, etc., that are the ones most likely to go unreported. In some cases they may not even be literal crimes anymore. They are also the most frequent “crimes” and the ones you are most likely to witness. And witnessing all those events makes one feel unsafe, regardless of whatever the FBI is telling you. When a disheveled man muttering to himself gets on your subway car, you instantly flashback to stories you heard on the news. Even if nothing happens, it turns your quiet commute listening to music on your earbuds into a tension-filled ride watching for the moment he goes off. When he does, it may or may not be a crime. No crime, but no peace either. And crimes of disorder have gone through the roof (data).

What have we learned about effective crime control policies? For one, they require active policing. The so-called Ferguson effect, named for the spike in violent crime after the riots in Ferguson, Missouri (caused by the police shooting of Micheal Brown, who never put his hands up and never said “don’t shoot”) is real. The effect happened again in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests/riots: tell police they’re not wanted and not trusted, and they will retreat, which empowers all kinds of criminal activity.

However, active policing doesn’t requite trampling constitutional rights. “Broken windows” policing, the idea that enforcing small rules against vandalism helps prevent a community sliding into a cycle of increasing criminal violence, works. But turning that policy into a massive “stop-and-frisk” exercise simply eliminates any trust between the community and the police. People want a friendly cop on the block, someone with whom they can talk and engage; they don’t want to be stopped and searched every time they leave their house.

Criminals may not be good at delayed gratification, but they aren’t stupid. Tell criminals they won’t be charged for shop-lifting less than $950 at a time (looking at you, California!) and they will demonstrate amazing math abilities when swarming a retailer. Abolish cash bail and criminals will go on a spree, because if the fear of jail doesn’t deter you in the first place, the fear of more jail eventually won’t either. Being in jail without bail does, ‘tho. As San Francisco learned, telling people their feeling of insecurity is all in their heads as they step over a drug-addled body on the street and into a pile of human feces while headed to the CVS where everything is under lock-n-key, is a losing proposition.

So if violent crime is going down, and police know what to do to fight it, why do we feel so insecure? In America, we have been on a libertarian/progressive bender with respect to crime and punishment. Not everywhere, nor all the time, but often enough to show up in regular people’s lives. In the war on drugs, the US has surrendered. We are gradually decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis in various forms, under the argument it’s no worse than alcohol (I will point out here that there are a nearly unlimited number of things which can fit into this category, so the argument is ridiculous, but hey, it has won). Courts previously ruled that homeless people could not be incarcerated for occupying public spaces. Over-policing like the stop-n-frisk effort undermined public confidence in the police and the broken windows theory. Various progressive groups cited arguable data to suggest that arrests and convictions were racially biased, leading to policies like cashless bail, the aforementioned green-light on shoplifting, and elimination of minimum sentencing.

What went wrong? If shoplifting isn’t punished, you will get more of it, like any other crime. If marijuana use is legal, cops aren’t going to police public use unless it’s egregious, and forget about possession with the intent to distribute (which in many cases was still illegal). If the homeless are free to live on the streets, they will (literally) do their business there, too. And if every police stop becomes a potential case of racial bias, cops will retreat from the very communities most at risk. Of course, when automated traffic cameras display the same “racism” noted in live police stops, it undercuts the argument.

My more perceptive progressive friends may point out that some of these same changes in law or enforcement were enacted successfully in Europe. And that’s true, to an extent. Decriminalization (drugs, prostitution) and an emphasis on rehabilitation or redirection to counselling have met with some success initially in Europe. One major difference there is cultural: Portugal’s famous drug decriminalization approach was based on a Portuguese culture which strongly disapproves of drug use. Another is they fund rehab. A third is they enforce what few limits they have. We didn’t. And even a place like Amsterdam which had the longest-running, most successful, libertarian approach to social “crimes” (i.e., drugs use and prostitution) is reconsidering. It is little wonder that wherever such approaches were developed in libertarian or progressive parts of America, they have failed miserably.

So it is absolutely true that violent and property crimes are greatly reduced. It’s also true that most Americans are witnessing a general lawlessness that is not conducive to feeling safe.

Personal Economy & National Economy

In the run-up to the election, the Democrats were highlighting how great the US economy was doing, while the Republicans were calling it a disaster. Let’s just draw this lesson: never tell the voters that what they’re experiencing is wrong. Voters have a choice, and telling them they are delusional has never been a winning campaign slogan.

But in reality, both sides were correct. By all the traditional measures, the US economy was blowing the socks off the rest of the world. And for everyday working-class Americans, it sucked. How can this be? That’s the difference between the national economy and personal economy.

Let’s start with the optimistic side, the one proffered by the Democrats. Before the election, the last set of inflation indicators came in at an 2.1% annual rate, which is almost exactly on target for the Federal Reserve (aka the Fed), and that’s what they want, to make for a economy which is running smoothly and is predictable enough for the business community to plan upon. This was down from a post-pandemic peak of 8.3%, and the reduction came within a period of only twenty-four months, which was unprecedented. In effect, the Fed got the soft landing it sought, curbing inflation without causing a recession, which was the usual method used in the past. Economists will be studying and writing about this for decades, it’s that unusual.

President Biden gets very little credit for this, as is appropriate. He tried to spend much more early in his term, which might have sent inflation out of control; he was only stopped by Senator Manchin, despite the Fed’s warnings. Even the Fed was late to the game, agreeing briefly with the Biden administration that inflation was only temporary, but as the data mounted, they quickly changed their tune and took it on with aplomb and courage.

Meanwhile, the money sent to individuals by both Presidents Trump and Biden kept people afloat, and freed them from jobs in businesses which may or may not survive the pandemic. In the end, this sparked a rash of new small business creation, a traditional source of American economic dynamism which had withered after the Obama years. Nations which sent money to keep people in jobs at the same company didn’t fare as well.

All of which is to say that America came out of the Covid lock-down in better shape economically than most every large economy, recovered quicker, and accelerated from there. Don’t believe me? Try these statistics from The Economist:

America is 50% of world GDP today, up from 40% in 1990.
China’s GDP was 75% of ours, now it’s only 66% and lagging.
Output per person is 30% higher than Canada/Europe, which is roughly double the 1990 levels.
My personal favorite: in Mississippi (America’s poorest state), workers earn more on average than Brits, Germans, or Canadians.

But how could Americans feel worse off when we had it better than everybody else? First off, no one knows or cares how everybody else feels. We all exist in our own economic bubbles. No worker ever thinks, “Gee, I’m glad we only have 8% inflation here, Turkiye has 53%!” What they think is, “hamburger was $6.00 a pound last year, and it’s $7.00 a pound now.” And when inflation drops to 2%, all they think is, “hamburger was $6.00 a pound last year, and now it’s $7.12 a pound.” Disinflation or the lessening of inflation is NOT deflation, so until consumers settle in and accept the new, higher prices, they will be upset.

But wait, weren’t wages going up more than prices? So weren’t those workers complaining unfairly, as they were better off despite the inflated prices? It is a fact that wage growth among the poorest workers was greater than price inflation. But this is where psychology comes into play. People on the working edge of poverty seek stability: they are often referred to as living “paycheck to paycheck” meaning they are one missed paycheck or large unexpected expense away from disaster. So when prices are going up in real time (every time they go to the store) but their pay jumps annually or irregularly, it adds to their stress, regardless if the totals for the year work to their advantage. And, workers attribute pay raises to their merit: I deserved this raise, I earned it. Price rises are done by somebody else to me, so it’s them (the government, the business, the bad guys) screwing me over. If I get a raise, I want it to show up in an improved lifestyle for my family, not just to keep up with what “the man” is doing to me.

On top of the inflation issue, working-class families faced an affordability crisis. Affordable housing, whether to rent or buy, became rare. Cities practiced an updated form of redlining designed to keep wealthy urban enclaves free of “those people” (working class folks of whatever race). Housing starts moved further and further out into the suburbs, where you could still build, but builders make more profit building McMansions out there, not duplexes or multi-family low-rises. Various forms of insurance rose above the inflation rate. Medical and child care expenses did the same. And don’t even contemplate the cost of a college education, which was the credential to success. Notice that none of these (even college) was considered discretionary spending for a family.

And this wasn’t just a post-pandemic event. The reigning orthodoxy in economics for the past fifty years has been dubbed neo-liberalism. It holds that if every country trades freely (no tariffs, no state subsidies, no other impediments to free trade) and all producers and consumers are free to compete in the market, everybody will benefit. On the macro scale, meaning for the world as a whole, this is demonstratively true. The world recently ran a little experiment, where China went from communism to state-controlled capitalism, got invited into the World Trade Organization, and it moved over 800 million people from poverty and created a Chinese middle class. Nothing like that has ever happened in the history of the world. And it happened without completely free trade, just “freer” trade.

The same thing happened with NAFTA, the original free-trade agreement between Canada, the US, and Mexico. It created a middle class in Mexico with good jobs in steady careers, leading to real democracy (before it was a one-party state) and a booming economy, which then greatly dropped the level of out-migration to the United States. So looking through the telescope at the big picture, it benefited everyone.

But looking through the microscope at your specific picture as a middle-class American manufacturing worker, something different happened. Competing against non-unionized workers in developing countries, or manufacturing sectors subsidized by foreign governments, those American workers lost out. True, those American workers could now buy much cheaper products from China, and all those Chinese people were not starving. But the price to the American worker was a steady decrease in their relative pay and benefits, or a loss of the job/career altogether.

Neo-liberal economists had an answer for this: the government will provide greater benefits to such workers, and training to transition to other career fields. Here are the problems with this otherwise brilliant plan. First, you’re a worker, and you want to do a job, not get a handout. That’s not just pride, that’s self-respect. Second, if you have grown up in a family of three generations of auto workers, you may not take kindly to a plan to re-train as a nurse in an assisted living facility. Oh, it’s a job with increasing demand, and one that can’t be off-shored to China, but it’s also not something you want to do. The same goes for schemes to turn manufacturing workers into coders, teachers, or day-care providers (all fields with job growth). At this point the neo-liberal economist would wash his hands and say, “well, if they don’t want to adjust, that’s on them.” Which works on the macro-economic scale, but not in Akron, or Mobile, or Pasadena.

All this has been going on for roughly fifty years. Look at this chart from Pew Research. Two things should jump out at you: first, the middle class has decreased as a share by over 16% (10 percentage points= a sixteen percent decrease). Second, the poor share has increased over ten percent, and the rich share has increased over a whopping seventy percent. When you look at those numbers, you must admit our economy has moved more people from poor and middle class into rich than the other direction, which is striking. You must also notice that for roughly every two middle class persons making it into the rich category, one middle class person became poor.^* This is the outcome we described above: an economy where growth and productivity is roaring, envied by other countries, but where the working class claws desperately to keep up and feels like it’s getting worse, . . . because for them, it is.

The Democrats have previously seen unions and government intervention as the means of redress to this challenge; Republicans typically saw it as a matter for the free market to address. Neither is sufficient. Unions in general have proven too feeble and corrupt to protect workers, government intervention just introduces unintended consequences to the market, and the free market left to its own devices sees no problem here. The escape of working class voters from the Democratic party in this election may be a wake-up call for them; there is already a pro-worker movement in the GOP (check out the American Compass, which JD Vance supports) looking to change its perspective.

The good news is we’re facing this challenge with a roaring economy behind us, which means we have resources at hand. The bad news is that also lets some folks think we don’t have to address the challenge. But our national and personal economies depend upon it!

* In a real statistical analysis, this is not strictly true, as some rich people became poor and vice versa, but as a generalization it holds.