La Frontera: Money, Drugs, People, & Guns

Watching the Biden Administration re-enact a scene from the Marx Brothers Duck Soup movie the other day prompted me to pen this overly long post. My apologies. I hope to keep it informative and entertaining despite its length.

Why Duck Soup you ask? Because of the absurdity of the claims made. On a single day, DHS Secretary Mayorkas said he had to act to waive several federal environmental regulations which prohibited construction of additional border wall along the US-Mexican border. OK, why? Because under American appropriations law, the money had to be spent for that, as that it is what it was designated for back in 2019 under the Trump administration. And now the money would expire if it wasn’t spent. So far, so good. All this is true. Then he went on to explain that there is a migrant crisis at the border, which justifies waiving the environmental regulations. Over 100,000 parents traveling with children crossed the border last month, an all-time record. Ummmm, but, well, that new border wall is only a few tens of miles long, and it’s not popping up overnight, but hey, ok, we’re still good.

Except the Secretary could have just refused to waive the environmental regulations, and what would have happened? The money would not have been lost: it just would not have been spent. Money we didn’t have (remember, all this is deficit spending, as we have been running a deficit annually for decades now) would not have been spent. So there must be a real migrant crisis, and the wall must help, right?

Except President Biden repeated Mayorkas’ claims about “havng to build the wall,” then added ‘No, a wall does not work.’ Then Mayorkas had to backtrack and agree with the President, but continue to claim he “had to spend the money.” Which was false. Which means the administration realizes it is under political pressure from all sides about the border and immigration, and it would rather lie and look like it’s doing something, even if that something doesn’t do anything in the President’s opinion.

“Just wait till I get through with it”

Hence Duck Soup.

To figure all this out, you need to know politics, appropriations law, immigration trends, and some international economics/trade. Hence the administration thought they could get away with it. Even mainstream media uncritically reported the claim “the money had to be spent.” If there is appropriated money which expires, but it is prohibited by other federal law from being spent, it does not have to be spent. Period.

La frontera, the border in Español, is a fraught topic. Unlike the Canadian-American border, which is far longer and still practically unregulated, the Mexican-American border is freighted with much history. It’s still the most permeable international membrane in history, with good reason. What crosses it is what makes it so important, so difficult to address, and so likely to make fools of idealists, politicians, and demagogues. And what crosses it in order of importance are money, drugs, people, and guns.

MONEY

For two centuries, la frontera was much like any other border: a sleepy land of lines where laws changed and nothing much else. There were national rivalries, some crime, an occasional invasion or raid, and that’s it. America grew into a world power and Mexico remained in the immortal words of Porfirio Diaz “so far from God, and so close to the United States.” Mexico advanced economically, too, but remained deeply entrenched in what was then-called the Third World. Then NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, happened. NAFTA integrated the American, Canadian, and Mexican economies to an unprecedented degree.

H. Ross Perot was right about one thing: the giant sucking sound you heard was jobs moving to Mexico. What he got wrong was the notion that there are a finite number of jobs and when Mexico gained one, America lost one. The effect on Mexico was profound, and its economy grew immensely, now the 14th largest in the world. Yes, some American business sectors suffered mightily, and individual Americans lost jobs in those sectors, but that was inevitable. All NAFTA did was decide who the winners were: China, Korea, Vietnam or Mexico. NAFTA picked Mexico. And all that did was make Mexico into a stable economy, give it a middle-class, and reduce the flow of Mexican migration into America. Pretty good deal, no?

Another effect was to make Mexico and America inevitably into each other’s largest trading partners, with thousands of business sectors where parts of the final product or service are seamlessly produced and assembled without legal friction. Our economies are integrated, and like Siamese twins, they can’t be easily disentangled. China tried to do it, and almost did, but the political and economic fall-out of the pandemic made American officials realize that friend-shoring (i.e., trading with close, friendly countries you can rely on) is essential. You don’t want to find out that all your medical gear and drugs are made by the angry country that might have just caused the pandemic, do you?

One last thing about money at the border. Because of historic migration trends and the continuing need for migrant labor, there are many ethnic Mexicans living in the United States. How many? Thirty-seven million approximately, making them one of the largest ethnic contingents in the American melting pot. And since la familia is everything in Mexican culture, they send money home to la familia. Called remittances, Mexicans in America used digital wire services to send a record sixty billion US dollars home to Mexico last year, amounting to four percent of Mexico’s GDP.

In summary, more money transits la frontera than any border in world history. It is uniquely permeable, and both countries have spent a lot of time and effort to make business work effortlessly across it. No one can stop that for long, or change it significantly, without changing the basic structure of both nations’economies. And since it works so well, no one really wants to. The European Union has spent five decades trying to build something similar with mixed results. The United States and Mexico did it without really trying.

DRUGS

Believe it or not, the second most important thing crossing la frontera is drugs, and that is actually a subset of the money/trade aspect. Illegal narcotics are essentially just another product/service, wanted by some, provided by others. When something is legal or permitted in one place, but illegal or prohibited in another, clever people find a way to move it from one to the other to make money.

I am going to say something that will make my conservative American friends a little angry. The problem with drugs is not Mexico. It is America. Now for my liberal friends? The solution to drugs is not their decriminalization or legalization. The solution to drugs is ending American demand.

Mexico is only the focus of drug trafficking because of the fact of la frontera. Anybody who watched the original Netflix Narcos series knows the original cartels were Colombian, and the Mexicans were only middlemen who figured out how to muscle in on the business. Now the Mexican cartels are the biggest players, and that has caused untold death and mayhem in Mexico. Believe me when I say the vast majority of Mexicans would gladly accept the end of the reign of narcotraficantes, and in fact pray for it every day. No one is winning here.

Like any market, the drug trade has changed over time, responding to the changing consumer tastes in America. What started as mules (human and equine) carrying marijuana bales over mountain passes led to bricks of cocaine loaded in submarines and to packages of meta-amphetamine hidden in truck engines. Now the narcos have moved their dope-growing into America as individual states relax possession laws and the cartels focus on fentanyl. Why fentanyl? It’s an advanced, synthetic (nothing to grow), pain-reducing, euphoria-producing opioid, a miracle of modern medicine. Except it’s also highly addictive, cheap and easy to produce, and incredibly lethal in even tiny doses. A gram of fentanyl is fifty times more powerful than pure heroin, and there are versions one-hundred times more powerful than that. Added to other drugs, it increases the effects at zero-additional cost. Except those adding it along the supply chain don’t know who has added how much, so you get a record of over 100,000 America accidental overdose deaths in 2022.

Now you might think the cartels would NOT want to kill off their customers, but being the good businessmen they are, they realized long ago that American demand for drugs is what economists call “inelastic.” That is, no matter how much it costs in money, violence, death, or misery, there is unlimited continuing demand. So throw another fentanyl brick on the Bar-B! And how easy is it to produce? You need the raw materials, which are basically powders, and a pill or brick-making machine which is about the size of a home coffee pot. So when politicians start talking about taking out the fentanyl labs, stop listening, because they are speaking gibberish.

Why can’t America stop the drugs from entering? Too much legitimate trade crosses the border every day. We would have to stop the economy to stop the drugs. The drugs are too easy to hide, too easy to change transit methods (mules, slingshots, submarines, drones, trucks, tchotchkes, tourists, day-trippers, etc.), too easy to write off if they’re discovered, and it’s even too easy to bribe US Customs and Border Protection personnel. If Mexico disappeared tomorrow, we’d have the Canadian cartels to deal with the day after tomorrow. As the decriminalization and legalization experiment in the various states plays out, we will only change where and how America experiences its drug-induced misery and death. Until Americans stop craving drugs.

There is a final, cautionary note. Late in the 18th and early 19th century, The British Empire brought the Chinese Middle Kingdom to its knees, literally. It did so with the strength of the Royal Navy, the economic power of industrialization, and the subversive provision of opium, of which the Chinese simply couldn’t get enough. The leaders and the led in China gave up territory (e.g., Hong Kong, Macao), sovereignty , and their dignity, leading to what the Chinese called the Century of Humiliation. Current Chinese President Xi has called his efforts to lead China the fitting rejoinder to the lost hundred years. Is it any wonder the Chinese see the delicious irony in providing fentanyl precursors (and other drugs) to the cartels for sale to America?

PEOPLE

While desperate videos of asylum-seekers picking their way through razor-wire capture our current attention, the flow of people is only the third most important thing crossing the border. Why does the humanitarian aspect pale in comparison? Because of its size. No, really. That portion of it is so small!

Over three hundred million people, ninety million cars, and 4 million trucks cross la frontera every year. The border zone is incredibly integrated, even more so than the national economies. Mexicans shop at the big malls in Laredo, send their kids to private schools in El Paso, even drive to see the Buc-ee’s north of San Antonio. Americans cross to get dental crowns, prescription drugs, cosmetic surgery, even cheap daycare. Sometimes the crossing takes a long time, sometimes it’s fast, but it keeps happening every day. And the thing is, all these people go home every night. If they wanted to, they could stay, Americans in Mexico or Mexicans in America. But they don’t. They like their homes, their communities, their culture. They like visiting el otro lado (the other side), and that’s it. This is the daily fact of life along the border, and no politician or party or policy is going to change it.

Depending on the relative economic conditions in both countries, many young Mexican men (mostly) and women (some) head north for better paying jobs. Most do so temporarily, sending those remittances home, saving up money to move back home to Mexico and buy a casa or start a tienda, which earlier they could never hope to do in Mexico. Some stayed in America, like most ethnic arrivals there do. But consider this: is there any other ethnic migration to America that has had as many returnees as Mexico has? Like those living on la frontera, most Mexicans really like being Mexican, living in Mexico, eating Mexican comida and living la cultura de la famila mexicana. Believe me, they respect the United States, they wonder at the United States, they compete in futbol with the United States, and man do they like potato chips and Coca Cola! If all of Mexico really wanted to be in America, they could get here in about a week. Just sayin’.

What about some of the most common fake news themes regarding migrants?

  • Taking American jobs? At times, America had worker visas for Mexican migrants to work in the harvest period for various crops, jobs which even 1960s-era American teenagers and twenty-somethings wouldn’t take. It helped to regulate the movement of migrants, and there is still a need for such workers today, even though few Mexicans need those jobs now (it’s mostly other Latinos, now).
  • Are migrants a means of drug-trafficking? They were once upon a time, much like bootleg stills were a thing during 1920s Prohibition. But the drug trade is a major multinational business now, and handing fentanyl bricks to desperate, illiterate peasants is not an effective distribution system. So yes, you may find some enterprising coyote ad-libbing with some drugs and migrants on the side, but this is not the drug problem, any more than your batch of home-brew beer is the alcohol problem. A bigger issue is that the narcos realized that due to America’s dysfunctional immigration system, the cartels could use their old cross-border routes to smuggle illegal migrants. Here’s the real genius: the cartels only need to get the migrants across the border–it doesn’t matter if the migrants get caught! The Americans either let the migrants stay, or they return them to Mexico. Either way, the cartels get paid once, or twice, with no downside.
  • Are most migrants criminals? Well, by definition, almost all are since they violate some law in crossing the border, a technicality but one worth remembering. You’ll find no group more irritated by illegal immigration than legal immigrants for that very reason, even when talking about their own ethnic relations! But such immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes in America, when considering their economic status. Poor people get desperate. Given that being convicted of a crime is a sure-fire way to get deported, most illegal immigrants are fearful of the American justice system (they also have no experience in a “just” justice system) and are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

What is absolutely true about the number of people migrating into the United States is this: the absolute number America can accept is huge, almost immeasurable. The absolute number your community can accept is small, almost unnoticeable. America is so vast, with so many towns and cities and space, it could easily absorb huge numbers of migrants. But of course, not all at once. Homes and businesses and schools don’t spring up overnight. You can’t integrate people into a country when you can’t even speak their language, let alone know anything about their culture. Mexicans and Americans have been practicing this dance for centuries, and we’re pretty good at it. But now we’re dealing with Venezuelans, Nigerians, Afghans, Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Haitians, et cetera. There is unlimited demand for migration to the United States, because all those peoples realize something many Americans have forgotten: maybe it’s not a bad place after all. There has to be limits, rules, and a line. It is only fair to those who are here, those who already came her, and those who want to come here.

If America can accept many more migrants, it can only do so willingly in the mind of the polis, the public. Migrants are statistics, people happen in real places. When it happens to you, it becomes real. See how quickly those sanctuary cities lost their lofty ideals when the migrants actually took them up on the offer of sanctuary? It is not racist or nationalist to want your neighborhood to be the way it was when you moved there; it’s human.

The sensitivity among some Americans to immigration always appears shortly after an especially large influx. America has five percent of the world’s population and twenty percent of its migrants. Our current forty-five million migrants are more than the next four countries combined. That total represents almost fourteen percent of America’s population, just short of the all-time record of fifteen percent set back in 1890. That’s the period of the Know-Nothings, the anti-Catholic Blaine laws, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the “Irish need not apply” signs.

People can accept change, but not too much, and not too fast. I live in an area which is sometimes called Gringolandia by locals, as so many American and Canadian expats live here the culture is different than the rest of Mexico. Can it cause some resentment? Yes. Does it create new opportunities? Yes. Is it manageable, if it happens slowly as opposed to in a rush? Yes. If you go into the southside of Chicago (be careful when you do!), you can probably find a ethnic Nigerian-community Catholic Church, with huge murals left of La Guadalupana (from the previous Mexicano worshipers) on the walls in the once-Polish neighborhood parish of St. Stanislaus. Change happens. America is actually good at it. And we need more Americans, wherever they come from!

GUNS

Weapons are the least important thing crossing the border, but they merit consideration, as some (especially in Mexico) contend they are an issue. Let’s see why. In case you haven’t heard, Mexico has a drug-cartel-violence-murder problem. How big a problem? Almost 43,000 homicides last year, putting them in the category of places like South Africa or Syria. Thousands of people go missing, usually the result of cartel attempts at intimidation, recruiting, or vengeance. The cultura of the extended Mexican family means most everybody has a relative involved in the drug trade. Which puts most everybody at some risk. This is also why targeting the cartels hasn’t worked so well for either the American or Mexican governments: you inevitably kill someone’s cousin, which means six new primos are aggrieved.

So are guns fueling the violence in Mexico? Well, if the cartels only had machetes, things might slow down a little, of course. The issue is what type of guns, from where? Mexico’s constitution contains the right to bear arms, just like that in the United States. However, legal weapons here are strictly regulated by type and number and use, and there is only one store, run by the Mexican Army, which retails weapons. Yet guns are everywhere, and so are gun homicides. The fact is, back in the 1970s, the Soviets flooded Central America with hundreds of thousands of cheap, reliable AK47s and other semi-automatic weapons, hoping to spark revolutions and keep the Gringos busy in their backyard. The AK47 is like a diamond: it is forever. Dig it up from a cache, oil it, clean it, and it fires like the day it was made. The AK47 is user- (but not target-) friendly, simple, effective, and plentiful. It is the narcos weapon of choice.

Do cartels import weapons from the United States. Yes. As they have diversified and made more money, cartels have illegally imported more exotic or expensive weapons from America. Some of those weapons are so powerful they over-match the Mexican military, and that’s a real-if-limited problem. Here’s the rub: if the Americans could magically shut down the flow of guns into Mexico tomorrow, the cartels could keep on shooting for decades. Why do some Mexican officials make such a big deal about American guns in Mexico? It is a convenient rejoinder: if the all-powerful American government can’t control guns from its side of the border, how can you expect Mexico to control drugs on its side of the border?

And there’s a statistics problem, too. To respond to the Mexican government’s concerns, the United States funds efforts to track weapons from the United States confiscated during crimes in Mexico. The funding keeps stats on how many are found, but only of those which are likely to be from the USA. Guess what? That’s a numerator without a denominator! So the stats show the number of such guns in Mexico increasing, but not what the relative percentage is. Maybe the number of American guns used in violent crimes in Mexico increased 100% last year. But if the number of American guns in Mexico is only 1% of the total number of guns used in crimes in Mexico, it is irrelevant. NO one knows, although any cartel photo shoot tells a story.

Simple solutions like “build the wall” or “sanctuary cities” are nonsense, and anyone who spouts them should be ignored. The social and economic integration America and Mexico has is an amazing boon for both, and should be fostered, never threatened. There are mutual solutions to the challenges posed by la frontera, but they require both parties in America, and both national governments, to avoid posturing and to give up slogans.

What Just Happened? The Trump Indictment IV

Usually I feel comfortable talking about the politics and legality of the various Trump indictments, based on the many reliable pundits out there willing to comment thereupon. But now we’re talking about a state indictment, and not any state, but Georgia. With a Georgia prosecutor, judge, and jury, under a Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. Good luck! There is no way I am going to read ninety-eight pages comprising forty-one counts against nineteen co-conspirators, then start into what it all means in Georgia!

“How long can this go on?”

So in this seemingly unending series about the former President’s legal troubles, I will concentrate on a few of the externals to the charges and trial, and more on the ramifications.

First, despite what you may hear from the defense, Fani Willis has a long, solid history as a prosecutor. She may have political motivations (see Shapiro, Josh), but that doesn’t mean she isn’t competent. She is.

Second, you’ll hear reference to all kinds of silly comments in the charging documents, citing meetings and phone calls and the like. No, those things aren’t illegal, but if you use them to do something illegal, they can be cited as evidence, especially of conspiracy.

Third, state and federal governments can try a person for the same crime because they are separate sovereigns, thus it is not double-jeopardy. But the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has at times held that when such a case exists, it is proper for the federal case to proceed rather than the state one. Here we have them marching in parallel. No one short of the Supreme Court will decide on this point, so look to that outcome (an appeal all the way to SCOTUS, if Trump et al are convicted). I’m not saying SCOTUS will overturn, just that this is a rare case where a form of double-jeopardy could play a role.

Finally, many (but not all) the charges in Georgia also involve whether the President and his co-conspirators knew they were wrong. So once again, the court will dig deep into the psyche of Donald John Trump. Good luck with that!

Stepping back from the immediate indictment, what are the implications?

First, we now have a precedent for the indictment of a major candidate for office by partisans (officials, yes, but partisan ones, too) during the election season. Let that sink in. Does any rational human being not see that prosecutors in Florida and Texas will be looking at the next crop of Democratic hopefuls for excuses to bring charges during the run up to the 2028 campaign? Care to bet me no state will? Whatever the outcome of the trial, the precedent is set.

Second, I yield to the members of the Fulton County Grand Jury that they believe a real harm was done to the state by the Trump alleged conspiracy. They heard the evidence and so voted. I question the need to bring the case in the first place. Sure, if Trump skated free on the federal charges, a case could have been readied to file, much as corrupt police officers are sometimes charged with federal civil rights violations after being give a pass by a state jury for some violent act. But the prosecutors wait to see how the first case comes out. In this case, it appears to me to be piling on, especially so as it will affect the campaign. Another case of “when Trump is involved, anything goes.”

Third, there is case law that federal officials cannot be tried by states for actions performed in the line of their federal duties. This is the precedent Mark Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff, is citing in asking the trial be moved to federal court. Now courts will have to parse out a new precedent whether all actions taken by a federal employee are “in the line” of duty. Mark Meadows is cited for arranging a meeting. If you are a federal employee, you should be very interested in how this part plays out. Imagine a future where any state can charge you and you have to prove your actions were “in the line” of duty? Imagine Assistant Deputy Secretaries in DHS charged by Texas for crimes committed by unauthorized border-crossers. What a world!

Fourth, I have already seen several gleeful reports that this case will include the booking and mugshot of the defendant, and a televised trial. I have mentioned the blood-lust Trump inspires before, and how undignified, even Trump-like, it is. Before anyone gets their hopes up, recall that a little thing called the Secret Service is involved. Things may not happen quite the way some people hope. And they shouldn’t hope for such things anyway. It’s base.

Fifth, whatever the outcome, it has no practical significance for the election. Trump can be tried, found guilty, and sentenced, and if he wins the electoral college, he will still be President. There is even reason to believe that under that scenario, the US Department of Justice would intervene in the case, calling for either the suspension or the overturning of the result as an infringement on the prerogatives of the Executive Branch. Which would be another bad precedent.

Sixth, while I have respect for the prosecutor and the judge in this case, I remind everyone that this is a state jurisdiction trial. Federal prosecution is most feared by all the accused, as federal prosecutors have an impressive record: last year, .4% of federal defendants went to trial and were acquitted. Almost 90% pled guilty. I am not reassured that the state office responsible for handling the posting of the indictment did so before the Grand Jury voted. That might be an omen for things to come.

So in summary, most of what the indictment alleges is factually provable, and some is obvious. Whether that constitutes a conspiracy under Georgia law I’ll leave to the good men and women of the jury. I would note that Stacey Abram has been walking around claiming the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial election (which she lost) was “flawed” and refusing (still) to concede, a fact I think will be mentioned at trial. Even a conviction has little relevance for the federal outcome, although the treatment of the accused, the effect on a campaign, and the legal precedents set will be with us for decades.

That’s a potentially high price for a mugshot.

What Just Happened? The Trump Indictment III

I can hardly generate the enthusiasm to cover this subject yet again. The Times and the Post had pages of news, analysis, and opinion. The main televised media interrupted coverage for breathless panels (are there any other kind these days?) which compared the event to 9/11, Watergate and the Moon Landing (not the last one, but almost). That says more about them than about the indictment, but it is important, so here goes.

Jack Smith, Special Counsel in the Department of Justice (DOJ), has indicted former-President Trump on four counts, namely

  • Conspiracy to defraud the US by denying the outcome of the 2020 election
  • Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, namely, that certification
  • Obstruction of that same official proceeding, and finally
  • Conspiracy to violate the people’s civil rights to vote and have their vote count.

First off, let’s dispense with the obvious partisan talking points.

Those on the right who suggest these indictments criminalize political speech are wrong. The former President and his MAGA supporters can stand on any corner and proclaim the 2020 election was stolen all day. They still can. What is in question are actions taken by then-President Trump and his co-conspirators. Those actions may (or may not) be deemed crimes. A simple analogy. You can claim that my car is yours. You can write about it, speechify about it, send me an e-mail, all protected by the First Amendment. But if you get in that car in question and drive away in it, I will charge you with theft and the matter will be resolved in court. Actions, not words.

Some on the left continue to insist that Mr. Smith should have charged Mr. Trump with insurrection and seditious conspiracy. The first was one of the charges referred to the DOJ by the January 6th committee. They over-reached there, as Jack Smith’s refusal to pursue it shows. The second charge is one that has been successfully used against groups like the Proud Boys, but those cases are moving up the appeals process, and higher courts are looking closely at them. The prosecutors got convictions at trial, but whether the charges themselves will hold up to higher court scrutiny remains to be seen. Smith smartly avoided the possibility.

Anybody who saw (even on tape) the January 6th riot, and heard Trump’s railing about the election, should have few doubts about the facts of the cases. There is only one real challenge within those facts. All the charges rest in some manner on conspiracy, and that charge requires the suspect’s knowledge that what he was doing was wrong. Not that he was in fact wrong, or even that others told him he was wrong, but that he knew he was wrong and proceeded anyway.

That is the main challenge facing Jack Smith in court. Now the indictments simply allege that Mr. Smith has the evidence to confirm this point, they don’t show the evidence, so we don’t know. Some of the forty-five pages allude to times when others told Trump he was wrong about the election, or when he made comments which suggest he knew he was wrong. That will be stacked up against the noise coming from the same man, loudly and continuously, for the past almost three years. We shall see. I don’t envy the court and the jury being invited into the squirrel’s nest that is Donald Trump’s mind.

There are some other, specific challenges hidden in the indictment. For example, fraud requires a tangible gain (monetary or otherwise), and so Mr. Smith must postulate what that was. The White House (which the President only “rents”)? Presidential pay (which Mr. Trump donated)? Denial of civil rights requires proving a specific intent to do so, as in the suspect saying, “I am going to cheat those Georgians of their right-to-vote,” so that’s a high bar. Finally, corruption, which gets several mentions in the indictment, must also be specific, and in related case, a unanimous Supreme Court threw out a “boundless” definition of corruption and the resulting conviction of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, calling it the criminalization of horse-trading of politics.

As you should now see, the basic case before the jury is strong. The appellate issues are huge. So we might see a short trial and conviction followed by a lengthy and contentious appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. So I ask the question: is it worth it?

Just as no president ever tried to reverse his defeat at the ballot box before, no prosecutor has brought charges for doing so, meaning there is no precedent for applying the statutes on the books to such a circumstance.

Peter Baker, NYT correspondent

Besides punishing the former President, what is at stake here? All those appeals will result in precedents. If a Trump conviction is overturned by the Supreme Court, Democrats will attack the legitimcy of the court, guaranteed. If it’s upheld, MAGAists will call the entire justice system corrupt.

Since 1973, the DOJ of all Republican and Democratic Presidents has held that a sitting President cannot be charged with federal crimes, as that would interfere with his constitutional duties. Trump was President when he committed the actions Jack Smith has charged against him. So now we have a precedent that while sitting, the President is immune, but the day he leaves office, we can go back and charge him for action undertaken while in office. Furthermore, the courts have held that the proper legal way to hold a President to account is impeachment. Trump was impeached by the House (equivalent to an indictment), but was not found guilty by the Senate for the same activities. While this is not a literal case of double jeopardy, it does raise obvious questions of equity.

What are the most likely outcomes of this trial? It won’t be short. The outcomes must be arrayed against the outcomes of the simultaneous election. The charges will still be in play, perhaps under appeal, in January, 2025 when the winner of the Presidential race is sworn in.

Conviction will not result in disqualifying Trump from office, despite the ravings of some. A Trump victory would force the DOJ to drop the charges consistent with their longstanding policy, which would leave the matter unresolved in Democrats’ minds. If they didn’t, MAGAists would revolt, and returning President Trump could move to pardon himself, generating another terrible precedent (and probably more legal wrangling, or even impeachment, depending on who has control of the House and Senate). If Trump loses the election, there is the chance he wins in the courts in the end, remaining the wounded martyr to his legion of fans (Trump 2028, anyone?). Even from prison. Democrats would cheer these outcomes up until the next Republican administration appoints special counsels for any and all living, Democratic, former Presidents. Think they won’t?

Should Congress have impeached Trump on interference in the election certification, just that, and not on incitement to violence and insurrection? Yes. We’ll never know whether more limited charges, with the intent to prevent another Trump candidacy (an outcome allowed under the constitution) would have attracted a few more Republican Senators.

Should we enact new laws against the types of behavior Trump and his co-conspirators exhibited? I welcome the debate, but Congress and the President have avoided it up to now, because it is so fraught with peril to the political process. Should we stretch existing law to cover such cases? Probably not, as the Supreme Court will rule if they get the chance.

Finally, the ultimate lesson, one we have failed to learn. Should we continue to change everything we do (our customs, our manners, our precedents, even our laws) because of Donald J. Trump? No. He is the great white whale of many in the liberal establishment, and in pursuing him, we give him too much credit, and undermine the very system some claim to want to protect. Perhaps those who say we cannot allow Trump’s behavior to stand should recall the fate of Captain Ahab.

What Just Happened: The Israeli Protests

If you keep up with the news, you probably know that the current ultra-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi) is trying to turn Israel into a fascist state by eliminating the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court. The opposition has delivered large crowds, huge protests, a threatened (rather promised) general strike, and even some resignations among the Israeli military’s famed reserve forces. Democracy hangs in the balance, as Bibi presses forward.

Of course, all that is a caricature of what’s really happening, which is far deeper and actually more profound. Democracy has nothing to do with it, as I will explain. This is a debate about the what Israel is and what it should be, one that has been simmering since it was born in conflict in 1948.

Israel has a fairly pure representative democracy. That is, it has only one legislature (the Knesset), designed to form governments by either a straight majority vote of the people or a coalition-building political process. No one is questioning that. Israel also has a Supreme Court which is independent of the elected government. Its members are chosen by a committee of nine: four representing the sitting government (two Knesset, two from the Prime Minister’s cabinet) and five lawyers (three sitting Supreme Court Justices and two members of the Israeli Bar Association) It takes seven votes to select a nominee, who then must be approved by Israel’s ceremonial President. In practice, Israel’s highest legal body selects itself.

The Israeli Supreme Court staked out its authority to review government actions and policies much like the US Supreme Court did in Marbury v. Madison. One interesting difference is the Israeli Supreme Court decided that one criterion it could use to overrule the government was “reasonableness.” While that sounds reasonable, try defining it in a consistent, coherent way. It didn’t prove to be an immediate problem until the last few years, when the court overturned policies and even prohibited the government from choosing a specific cabinet minister. In any event, the Israeli Supreme Court acted as a check on the government, and some would say the only check on it.

Remember now that the Israeli Knesset is a democratic body, both in how it is selected and how it acts. And the court is a check on it. Got it? Which is why this is not about democracy.

Lately, the Knesset has had an unstable series of short-term governments, as the Israeli electorate is evenly divided between liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As in most parliamentary systems, there are numerous small, often-extreme parties which can play the role of king-maker (or more appropriately, Prime Minister-maker). Such is the one right now which has Bibi back in the chair with extreme right-wing or religiously conservative partners.

So is this all about politics, not democracy? No. For years, politicians on both sides have indicated the Supreme Court needed to be reformed, as both feared it was becoming too powerful , too insulated (as it chooses itself) and more importantly, too arbitrary. Parliamentary governments are inherently unstable, and they become almost impossible when an outside body (i.e., the court) can rule who can be a cabinet minister. Liberals/Progressives switched to opposing any change now because of who is in the ruling government: if the court’s ability to restrain the government is limited right now, they fear the ultra-conservatives will run wild. They may not be wrong, and they are certainly correct to fear such an outcome. But all that points to the real issue, which is neither democracy nor politics: it is the Israeli polity.

The modern state of Israel has always represented an uneasy alliance between two competing visions: a larger group of secular/progressive Jews (Zionists) looking for a haven from a hostile outside world, one where they can enact their idea of a peaceful, communitarian paradise, and a small set of religious Jews (Haredim) who seek to return to being God’s Chosen People, and only that. In-between those two groups were pragmatic Jews (smaller than the left, larger than the ultra-orthodox) who might not want to chant Torah all day, but weren’t convinced by the promises of socialism. For decades, these groups set aside their differences to deal with the unrelenting hostility of Israel’s Arab neighbors. It doesn’t make sense to argue about whether busses can run on Shabbos when there’s an Arab army marching on the town!

Here’s where demographics plays a card. The ultra-orthodox, correctly called Haredim, were content to get special favors from the government for a long time. They were a small group, and as long as the government left them alone, they agreed to merely complain about the rest of Israel not abiding by Halakha (Jewish religious law). The government agreed to exempt them from military service, allowed them to run their own schools, and even granted them extra social benefits. The Haredim and their way of life were subsidized by the Israeli government, whether conservative or liberal.

A funny thing happened. Haredi families average six children and holding steady. Secular Jewish families (whether politically conservative of liberal) average two children and falling. Government data show 1/4 of first graders in Israel are Haredim. So the Haredim have risen to almost thirteen percent of Israel’s population, and parties representing them have gained an important number of seats in the Knesset. And since they are continuing to grow, they are on target to reach almost forty percent of the population by mid-century.

As they have grown, they have protected the benefits they previously secured from the government, but have begun to demand more implementation of their views on social issues: separate spaces in public for men and women, stricter Shabbos observance, restrictions on advertising, more funding for and support of their way of life. This has predictably led to conflict, as the liberal and progressive Israelis see the Haredim as people exempt from the military, learning nothing but Torah in their schools, and coddled by the government. The Haredim respond that their faith is what is protecting Israel. As one young Haredi man said, ‘if everyone was learning Torah and praying with us, God would protect us.’

Why is this playing out over the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi’s government is willing to grant the Haredim greater rights and privileges. Yet of the court can simply rule such things as “unreasonable,” it can stop that process. The battle is really over what Israel is: a secular democracy or a more religiously-inclined one.

Here’s the even more interesting part. The Biden administration is conducting some high-level negotiations (right now) with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration brokered the Abraham accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. That was little noticed but important, because it represented the first major normalization among Arab states not directly in contact with Israel. The contact states like Egypt and Jordan came to the table long ago; Syria (and the Syrian puppet government in Lebanon) never will. Most other Arab states held back, waiting to see what the Saudi monarchy did.

The Saudis are looking for a NATO-style commitment from the US for protection (not the backroom handshake deal which has been in effect since FDR) and a US-provided civil nuclear program. Bibi wants Saudi normalization as a feather in his cap, and to establish the basis for an Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian coalition. The Biden Administration wants to reassert US leadership in the Middle East, push out the Russians and Chinese, and draw a line in the sand with Iran.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the man President Biden called a pariah (maybe) and a murderer (certainly), is the power behind the throne (literally) in Saudi Arabia and is leading the Saudi side of the negotiations. The Times and Post have started briefly commenting on the talks, which were secret until now. Saudi King Salman (MBS’ father) has apparently insisted that Israel make some offer to the Palestinians as part of the process, and specifically that promising not to annex the West Bank is insufficient. The fact that such things have leaked suggests to me the talks are far along, and neither Bibi nor MBS is willing to let the issue of Palestine derail the agreement.

What’s this got to do with the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi is dependent upon the Haredi and ultra-conservative parties because he has a narrow majority in the Knesset. The Biden administration has reportedly told Netanyahu not to go forward with changes to the court’s rules and composition without first securing an agreement with which the majority of Israelis agree. How to square the circle? What if Netanyahu secures a grand deal with Saudi Arabia, gets increased American aid, throws the Palestinians a bone (it wouldn’t need to be much, since there is no reliable partner to negotiate with right now), and offers to bring some liberal/labor parties into the government to negotiate a better set of court reforms, while letting the Haredi and ultra-conservatives choose to stay or go?

It’s a high-impact, low probability scenario, I admit. The shoals of Middle Eastern politics are filled with the hopeful shipwrecks of American and European peace plans, and this may be one more. But the US Secretary of State isn’t shuttling around the Middle East (repeatedly) to sample falafel. Stay tuned!

Failing at College

The Supreme Court recently made two important decisions affecting (not impacting) post-secondary education in America: eliminating the use of race as an admissions tool, and denying President Biden the authority to waive accumulated student debt. Both are major changes, and welcome ones in my opinion. But both the policies in question and the courts decisions addressed the symptoms of our failing system of college and university education, not the sources. There is a real post-secondary educational problem: there are too many students, paying too much tuition, and receiving too little education. Those students accrue too much debt, which is currently federally-secured. You can see the problem: they’re never going to pay it off, and you and I are on the hook for it. How did we get here?

All this for $50,000 a year? I’ll take it!

Like most debacles, it’s not just one thing, but there is one important and often-overlooked cause: failing to understand the dynamics of the situation and correctly define the problem. What is post-secondary education for? Why does it even exist? Universities developed out of Catholicism in the Middle Ages, seeking the scholastic trinity of “truth, goodness, and beauty.” Traditionally, there were two aspects to this search. One was to give certain highly-specialized fields of study the time and attention they deserve. Think doctors, lawyers, engineers: you want them well-trained before they ever start in their profession, and you want their professions to grow and deepen.. The second was to provide for a well-rounded individual, thus the Humanities curriculum. Leaders of tomorrow, whether they be politicians, businessmen, or any of the specialties mentioned above, need to have an understanding of human nature, history, civics, psychology, etc. Why? You don’t want a politician who doesn’t understand that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” You don’t want an engineer who only worships efficiency and neglects comfort. You want a surgeon with empathy, not one who sees his patients as slabs of meat to cut on. Pretty obvious, no?

People who underwent such education were a limited lot. The local butcher, shopkeeper, and policeman were fine without it. Because of the vicissitudes of history, such education was usually reserved to white men of property. It obviously didn’t have to be that way, but it happened nonetheless. And the result of that education played out in an obvious fashion: graduates of this system fared much better than those who did not have access to it. The fact that those graduates also had access to all kinds of other advantages which played a part in their later success was obvious, but sometimes forgotten.

In the mid-to-late twentieth century, the gradual liberalization of society led to calls for greater diversity in college admissions: more women, more people of color. After all, there was no legitimate reason to deny them access as they were just as likely to succeed. The fact that in most cases they were disadvantaged only strengthened the argument.

A little later, state governments decided to remove the stipends they paid to public colleges and universities. Budgets were tight, and politicians saw costs increasing markedly as more people went to college, while the majority of the population still did not attend. Using public funding for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many seemed like a poor policy option. The argument that a more educated populace was better for all sounded vaguely like an analogue to “trickle-down economics.” State governments encouraged state colleges and universities to rely on tuition and to compete, on the theory such competition would improve the results: less cost, better education. But post-secondary education was hardly a free market: high barriers to entry, limited suppliers, limited governmental oversight.

And there were still some proponents of college-for-all. They posit that if a college degree results in higher lifetime earnings, then everybody should have access to it, as that is only fair. See how this view misses the point of post-secondary education as it originally existed: a finishing school for a subset of the population. Most people didn’t need it. But college-for-all types viewed a sheepskin as a credential, not a learning experience: get the degree, make more money. Except that’s not what a college degree represented. It was an education, not a credential.

Meanwhile, the federal government, responding to the notion that college should be available to far more people (if not all), and the fact that a marketplace of colleges competing for students would probably decrease overall attendance, decided to become the guarantor of student loans.

Here’s where the economists are face-palming.

You create an increasing demand for college education, with a limited supply (you can’t generate new schools overnight). You fuel the demand further by offering generous loans packages (rates and repayment schemes no bank would ever offer an eighteen year-old with no job) guaranteed by the federal government (you know, the people who literally print the money), and you tell colleges to compete for students.

The prospective students don’t care about return on investment (ROI), as they haven’t even learned about that yet. The colleges have no reason to limit tuition, since price is no longer a determining factor due to federal funny-money. And since students are the ones making the choices, they look for name-recognition and perks. They’re young adults, they want to impress and be catered to. So colleges which previously took the position “we have an education you need to learn or else” transitioned to “help us find your idea of education (and be comfortable doing it).”

Voila, as they say, you have insane tuition that no one really pays, except the federal taxpayers who get socked after the fact for student debt relief. You have colleges eliminating core curricula and instead offering a smorgasbord of trendy electives which amount to fast-food degrees (high cost, little value). You get serial students with hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in debt and degrees in non-marketable subjects (they never do learn ROI, so they don’t even know what they don’t know).

And here we are. Add in for-profit rip-off institutions, racial gamesmanship, and elite university endowments which border on the obscene, and you have the modern American post-secondary educational disaster. Oh, there are still a small number of professionals earning useful degrees and preparing to be the doctors, lawyers, engineers and leaders of tomorrow. That system still exists. But the rest of the contraption is a very expensive Rube Goldberg device of little value and high cost, in terms of money, utility, and social damage.

As bad as all this sounds, it’s even a little worse because it isn’t that hard to fix. First off, stop treating a college degree as some magic ticket which makes one wealthy. To re-purpose an old campaign phrase, “it’s the education, stupid!” College is not for everyone, and jobs which require a college degree should have some legitimate reason for doing so. People who go to college should pay their own way. Colleges should compete on tuition and graduate performance, and enforce common knowledge standards. Students should be held to standards if they receive any form of financial support. You want specifics?

  • Eliminate government subsidies for any colleges with massive endowments. The elite schools can literally afford to cover all their students tuition in perpetuity. Make them do it, or have their students’ rich parents do it. And tax those endowments, please!
  • Enforce expanded minimum core curricula for all degree-producing schools as part of accreditation. This is probably still the case, but the standards have become too lax. Every graduate needs to understand human psychology, American history and government, macro and micro-economics, for example. Electives should be the cherry on the top, not the bulk of the meal.
  • Require detailed reporting on college costs and outcomes. What percentage graduate, with what debt burden? What are the average salaries of specific degree-holders at the five and ten year point?
  • Re-imagine admissions to negate racial, legacy, athletics and other considerations. Applications must be on a common form which erases who the student is, from where they come, etc. Just classes and grades and test results, and if the college so chooses, standardized testing scores. AI can probably help in this process. Use an essay (similarly scrubbed and de-personalized) for a better understanding of the individual.
  • Support the growth and success of community colleges. Here is where governmental funding should be targeted, especially for technical topics (e.g., coding, health-care services, law enforcement) and common curricula (finishing school for those not sure whether they want to go the full baccalaureate route). This also provides a window of opportunity to late-blooming students who would benefit from a four-year degree program.
  • Tie federal subsidies to compensatory service as an alternative to repayment. You want to pay off your loan, great. If not, you start working for the federal government (or allied state programs) for a few years, either as a pause on repayment or eventually a waiver for it. I keep hearing Millennials complain there aren’t good jobs with great benefits like pensions anymore, while I read pages of empty federal job vacancies. Maybe they haven’t heard of the internet?
  • Want to get really radical? Throw out all athletic scholarships (an oxymoron even more ridiculous than military intelligence). All sports at colleges and universities are club squad/intramural/extra-curricular. For the big money-makers, men’s college football and basketball, make the teams simply affiliated with the universities through a financial agreement. The one-and-dones in basketball and the NIL shenanigans in football should be enough to convince even the most ardent fans that student athletes are mostly a thing of the past. This is where the NCAA and courts are headed anyway, so why not embrace it?
  • Not radical enough? Tie any federal funding (e.g., research grants, tuition) for colleges and universities to concrete standards promoting the common good. What has your institution done for the local community? How have you enabled academically-gifted but financially-disadvantaged students to enroll and graduate? How are you leading by example in terms of promoting free speech and diversity of ideas? Let the institutions publish their plans and their results, with the government solely giving them an annual pass/fail grade to make them eligible for federal funds.

Tuition costs have increased almost 180% over the past forty years, well beyond the effects of inflation. That spending has gone into endowments, athletics, administrative positions, infrastructure, and student services. Note what is missing: education. No one seriously argues today’s American college graduates are better educated than graduates of the past; they’re just much more expensive. The system as it is is failing.

America is at an inflection point. While more people want to go to college (as a percent of the population), the overall number of young people is declining. Small schools, private schools, and liberal arts schools are in danger of disappearing, as they did not prepare for the future and don’t want to now. The American post-secondary educational system was the envy of the rest of the world. It still is, in an elite sense: twelve of the top twenty universities in the world (according to Times Higher Education) are in America. Those elites who seek advancement are still attending the best schools and getting the best education. The system works for them; it just fails the larger talent pool of American students, their parents, and the taxpayers. Fix it. Now.

There’s a Reason

When people get especially critical of America, its politics or policies, its history or culture, I like to remind them . . . there’s a reason:

If “(i)n America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage”(Ta-Nehisi Coates), why do millions of black Africans begin a perilous journey across the Atlantic to Central or South America, then walk thousands of miles just to get to the US border? Did they fail to get the word?

When “bigotry against Hispanics has been an American constant since the Founding Fathers”(Marie Arana in the Washington Post), why do millions of Hispanic people of every nation and religion abandon home and hearth–and sometimes carrying their children on their backs–jump on moving trains just to get there? Like Rick in Casablanca, were they “misinformed?”

“Waters? What waters, we’re in the desert.” “I was misinformed.”

If America is a xenophobic land of increasing anti-Asian hate crimes, why do wealthy Chinese families insist on sending their prized only-child or grandchild to expensive American universities?

When America is the home of fervent anti-Islamic religious bigotry, why did Afghan Muslims risk certain death to cling to the wheels of American transport planes as they evacuated Kabul?

If Canada is all that America claims to be in terms of kindness, opportunity, and freedom, and there are nine Americans (roughly) for every Canadian, why did more Canadians move to America than vice versa in ninety-nine of the last one hundred years?

One can find ethnic expat enclaves in many countries, but why is America the only place you can find so many different, thriving ones? London may have several representing the ties of empire and Commonwealth, but there’s a little Mogadishu in Minneapolis and Koreatown in Los Angeles. Burmese Christians created Chindianapolis in Indiana, and there’s a little Albania in the Bronx and Little Ethiopia in DC. San Jose has a Vietnamese community, Edison (New Jersey) has an Indian one, and Miami has Haitians, among a Cuban diaspora. Ethnic immigrants binding together is a common international phenomenon, but in America it becomes a point of pride and celebration.

It is easy to find videos from Europe featuring “man-in-the-street” interviews where locals decry the cultural crassness, the violence, the bigotry, the political divisiveness of America. They sit perched on a park bench, perusing their iPhone, eating McDonald’s, wearing jeans and a English language print t-shirt, with their ethnically homogeneous friends. Actions speak louder than words, non?

America has so many faults. We pretend inequality is only because of effort. We lionize superficiality and physical attractiveness over performance and moral courage. We idolize the individual, but deep down inside, we know none of us deserve deity status. Our schools are a mess, our infrastructure is crumbling, we spend far more than we have. Our leadership on all sides is more interested in scoring political points than getting anything done.

And yet they keep coming. Why?

Because America is about an idea. It’s about a possibility. It’s about an opportunity. Even when it falls short–and it sometimes does–the promise of a better life in a better place remains. And it does get better: sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident, often slowly. That possibility is something worth trying for, even worth dying for. And so they come.

Some Americans forget just what a special privilege it is to be born American. They see all those faults I listed (and many others) and they think “burn it all down” or “start over” or “replace it with . . . ?” They have the luxury of outrage. Don’t listen to them. They are people who are so myopic they can’t see the truth staring them in the face.

Yes, America is flawed. Always has been. But its promise has always been so much greater than its flaws, even when it was a land of slavery and rich, white, male suffrage. And throughout a checkered history, it has consistently acted on that promise: changing laws, changing customs, fighting wars (even a civil one), and providing a chance, an opportunity, to live a better life. Whoever you are. From wherever you come.

Bet you didn’t expect that!

That’s something to celebrate. Happy Fourth of July!

What just happened? The Trump Indictment II

Since the first days of the investigation into former President Trump’s handling of classified materials, I have cautioned my friends to be careful about making up their minds before all the facts are in. Why? First off, it’s easy with Trump, as most people made up their minds long ago. Those with MAGA hats believe whatever he says; Trump-haters think that the end of getting him justifies the means. Both sides make the same mistake: thinking everything revolves around Trump. There have always been larger issues at stake.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000188-a12f-db74-ab98-b3ff4de50000

Now we have the actual indictment brought forward and released by Special Counsel Jack Smith. I read it so you don’t have to. It is important to reiterate what Mr. Smith himself said about the presumption of innocence, as well as the point that an indictment lays out the basics of the prosecution case, but of course the defense will also have its say. Here’s what you need to know (pun intended):

  • The indictment lists numerous highly-classified documents with descriptions suggesting they contain some of the most sensitive classified information. One initial concern about this case was that there are millions of classified documents, and all are not created equal. It is clear from the indictment Trump had very important documents, highly-sought after by enemies of the United States, and limited in access to very small numbers of authorized officials. This was not a case of small potatoes.
  • Trump directed the handling of the documents at the White House, at Mar-a-lago, and several other times during his post-presidency period. The defense that he did not know about the documents, that perhaps a staffer mistakenly transferred them, is not viable. This was the defense Vice President Pence probably used (successfully) and it may well be what President Biden uses when his case comes to a conclusion.
  • There is no suggestion that any of the material was compromised (seen or acquired by foreign governments). The random methods used to transport and store the material ironically practically ensured no one knew exactly what was there, or where it was. Any talking heads suggesting “damage to national security” are blowing smoke based on what the indictment holds, although there will be more investigation of this point.
  • Trump openly admitted he knew the documents he was handling were “secret” (sic), “still classified,” and that he could no longer declassify them. This destroys his public defense that he automatically declassified them by thinking it was so while he was still President. He also showed classified materials on two occasions to people unauthorized to see them, although the indictment seems to indicate Trump was holding the document and waving it in front of the unauthorized persons, probably minimizing compromise.
  • Trump publicly stated he was in compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which may or may not be true, but is irrelevant, since he was indicted under the Espionage Act and for conspiracy to obstruct justice, lying, and withholding. The Espionage Act does not require anyone to actually be a spy for another country; its provisions also extend to the mishandling or criminal neglect of classified information. Lying, withholding, and conspiracy are separate statutes.
  • Trump just made the claim that only the President may determine which government records are “his,” and having done so, the records in question are governed solely by the Presidential Records Act. However, the classified documents in question are all products of various Executive branch agencies, and even if then-President Trump wrote notes on them, they do not become his personal records. That, and some are classified by law (the Atomic Energy Act, which even the President may not declassify) and marked “Restricted Data.” His claims here amount to telling the policeman who pulled you over for speeding on the interstate that you’re sober, you have a license, your car is properly registered, and you drive the speed limit on your home street. “what’s the problem, officer?”
  • The obstruction and related charges are by far the most significant, as they have no technical defense a la the Presidential Record Act or the President’s authority over declassification. If Trump was charged under either of those cases, the indictment would be weak. As it is, the indictment is strong. Trump can’t claim the records were his or not classified; that doesn’t matter if he lied about having them, hid them, and induced others to join him in doing so.

The conspiracy et al charges are also the potentially weakest ones in the indictment. Why? Because they rest on two pillars: the efforts by Trump’s assistant, Waltine Nauta, to access/move/hide the records at Trump’s direction, and the communications the government seized between Trump and his first lawyer. Mr Nauta has a close personal relationship with Trump, and while he could avoid penalty by turning the prosecution’s witness, this is unlikely. The Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer went to federal prison recently rather than turn on Mr. Trump, and I would expect no less from Mr. Nauta. The fact that the government has highly-damaging communications between Trump and his initial lawyer rests on an earlier court ruling that suspends the attorney-client privilege in cases where the relationship was used in furtherance of a crime. This ruling will come up again in this trial, and if the evidence is thrown out, the conspiracy charges are greatly weakened.

If the conspiracy et al charges hold, Mr. Trump will have a hard time avoiding prison. Lying and covering things up were what brought Nixon down, and only a pardon spared him incarceration. If those charges fail, the most likely outcome is a fine or some other form of non-prison punishment. The notion that the United States would put a former President in prison for mishandling classified information is simply too great a reach. While some partisans would cheer for it, it would be a terrible precedent for the sitting President, too. I could foresee a plea deal, or even a pardon, if that is all that is left of the charges.

Finally, what about the comparisons to the handling of classified information by then-Senator/Vice President Biden, and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? We simply don’t know enough about the Biden case to comment on it yet. Somebody moved the documents and left them where they were unsecured, but we don’t know who or under whose guidance. We also don’t know whether the documents were highly classified. We do know they were unsecured for years, and thus somebody was responsible for gross negligence.

The comparison to the Clinton case is what should be most galling to Trump’s supporters. Secretary Clinton willfully circumvented the rules, did so over an extended period of time, and the FBI found most likely some of the classified information was compromised. But she left no literal or figurative fingerprints on her actions. So Trump will find himself in federal court because he was too stupid, talked too much, and left a trail of classified bread crumbs leading directly back to himself. And with no one to blame but himself.

Progressivism: . . . and the Ugly

Today’s Progressives seem to have all the good intentions of their earlier believers, but they seem to have learned little from their history. What makes the outcome ugly is their stubborn insistence that ‘this time it will be different’ married to the quasi-fervor that their ends justifies the means.

Today’s progressives remain true believers in science, but that “faith” has edged over into scientism, the belief that science can settle all questions, and can in fact itself be “settled.” Science can’t unlock the secret of love nor can it explain the evil mind. Science is settled only until it’s not, and if the recent pandemic taught the average person anything, it was to be very careful about expert opinion. Science is great at explaining how (and sometimes why) things work. It’s not so good at determining policies affecting people’s lives.

Another place where Progressivism today is worse than its predecessor is in its adoption of another -ism: presentism. Presentism is the belief that people today are superior (morally, ethically, intellectually) to those who came before, and we should judge the past by our superior standards. While today’s technology is undeniably better, I see no data which suggest people today are superior. Where’s today’s Jefferson, Michelangelo, da Vinci? Ranchers one-hundred years ago knew ecology better than most ecologists today. Farmers two centuries past produced surplus crops without modern irrigation or drones. Common people during the Middle Ages spoke a vernacular language as well as Latin, and they mastered trade skills as a way of life. Humanity today has better tools, but human nature remains unchanged. Societies can be more or less humane, but progress there is not certain.

As an example of presentism, I often mention that family structures in the US were more stable in the 1950s. I barely can finish posting that on social media when Progressives will retort that I “long for the patriarchy” or “forgot Jim Crow” or want to send people “back into the closet.” That’s presentism rearing its ugly head. Yes, all those things happened in the 1950s, including stable family structures. Now there is no evidence to suggest that limiting anyone’s freedom contributed to more stable families. I would argue stable families happened despite those challenges. Especially for black families, who faced so much oppression, yet were remarkably stable. Not any more. What happened? If you’re a progressive today, the notion there was anything good in the past has to be rejected, as only today, and the better future, matter.

You can hear presentism whenever a Progressive talks about being on “the right side of history.” Christians believe history has a direction, which is what led the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to famously say “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that’s a religious proposition, not a progressive one. Ultimate belief in one’s righteousness about ‘the side of history’ has been at the core of many of the worst examples of inhumanity in the past century.

Finally, Progressives also retain their fondness for change. As they have seen their ideas rejected by the courts and the voters, they now opt to argue for changing the system in toto. Progressives are proposing eliminating the Senate (because it equalizes all States and thus currently favors Republicans), enlarging the House of Representatives (because, yes, everybody agrees we need MORE politicians in Washington), term-limiting the Supreme Court (not mentioned when the octogenarian RBG wore the robes) or simply ignoring its rulings when they are not consistent with Progressive values (did they not learn about the South’s Massive Resistance in the 1960s?).

“We’d all love to change your head”

Rather than learning humility from their failed history, today’s progressives double-down on their beliefs. I still don’t question their motives. The original progressives were just as self-righteous, but they had an excuse in that history had not yet shown them their follies. Perhaps Progressivism will learn, change itself, and survive as a movement. But there’s a difference between being blind, and refusing to see. That’s from a really old book, but most progressives wouldn’t want to read it.

Progressivism: The Bad . . .

If you thought my last post was my attempt to come-out as a Progressive, never fear, you’ll feel differently after this one. Or maybe the next.

My review of Progressive theory’s positives centered on its good intentions, its openness, and its vitality. To which I would now note:

  1. the path to hell is paved with the first
  2. no tent is ever big enough, and
  3. action in the wrong direction is not progress.

Why all the negativity? Well, as I alluded to in my first post, today’s Progressives act like they have never heard of their movement’s past. America tried Progressivism once before, and to paraphrase Dr. Malcolm, Progressives “had their shot, and nature chose them for extinction.”

He got all the best lines!

American Progressivism developed in the period 1890-1920. It grew rapidly, and by the time of the 1912 Presidential election, all three major party candidates (Democratic, Republican, and Progressive) identified as some form of Progressive. This was a period of profound social and technological change, which was fertile soil for Progressive beliefs. A person born in 1860 went from a society on horseback to railroads, automobiles, and even planes by the age of sixty. Communications went from letter and post to telegraph, telephone, radio, and silent movies. Medicine identified disease theory and greatly reduced infant mortality. And society went from farms and small shops to factories and mass production.

It’s easy to see why Progressivism would be attractive under such conditions. Technology seemed to be promising unending improvements. New groups of people were disadvantaged by all the changes: factory workers, miners, immigrants. The system (whether it was society, religion, or the government) appeared to be unequal to the task of adapting. Progressives held some form of power in Washington from 1901 (when Teddy Roosevelt replaced the assassinated McKinley) through the Republican Taft administration until 1920 (the end of Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s second term). At that point, a massive voter rejection of Progressive policies ended the movement’s influence for a century.

Progressivism scored some major victories: Woman’s suffrage, laws against forced labor and poor working conditions, and others for unionization and protecting the environment (including the National Park system). But it also led to over-reach, as in the case of Prohibition.

What happened to Progressivism? Many of those positive qualities I mentioned in the previous post had a negative side, too. For example, the belief that technology (especially science and medicine) always make things better proved to be disastrously false in the Great War. Mass production brought mass warfare. Flight brought aerial bombardment of cities. Chemistry brought gas warfare. TriNitroToulene (TNT) made better explosives. Even electricity and mass production led to child labor at sweatshops.

The drive to improve mankind also had consequences. Some doctors wrongly applied evolutionary concepts to biology and society, developing bogus concepts like eugenics and championing discredited phrenology. They furthered efforts to limit the growth of “unwanted populations” or uncivilized ethnic groups. Contraception led to mass sterilization, care for the mentally-ill led to mass involuntary hospitalization, and the apparent “superiority” of European cultures promoted paternalism at home and colonialism abroad.

Politically, Progressive’s Big Tent failed to screen out elements with whom they should not have allied. Communism seemed to be like-minded, even as it quickly showed its de-humanizing techniques. Racists and Nazis championed Progressive ideas, taking them to their logical extremes. International bodies like the League of Nations treated all countries equally, a recipe for inaction, while idealists put forward treaties outlawing “war” as if that had any significance.

This history, long established and not controversial, always made me wonder why certain liberals chose to brand themselves “Progressives” in the early 2000s. It would be like some new German party saying they were for National Socialism, not realizing the words had history with another meaning. Of course, Republicans spent decades besmirching “liberalism” which was the very essence of republican (note the small ‘r”) values, so perhaps self-proclaimed liberals had to come up with a better name. They didn’t.

Progressivism not only failed to deliver on its promise, it played a major role in setting the stage for some of the horrors of the 20th century, from the Holocaust to medical experimentation to racism to global war. By the early 1920s, Americans were already tired of it, yet they would suffer its consequences for almost thirty more years. And then it became a dirty word, buried in history for another fifty years.

When, like a political zombie, it came back. Next, part three, the Ugly.

Progressivism: The Good . . .

I have friends of every political, religious, and ethnic stripe. I like to think it reflects kindly on my inclusivity, although I admit it reflects poorly on my friends’ judgment of character. Be that as it may, I often irritate my Progressive friends with my persistent questioning of their beliefs. I make an observation about some trend or incident in the public space, they respond with a mixture of shock and disgust that anyone they know could think the way I do. Rinse-n-repeat.

Today I want to try a different tack. Part of the problem is we all assume that others must see the world as we do, which leads us to jump to conclusions when we see an opposing opinion. People think, “you must see the world as I do (since I’m objectively correct), so if you disagree with me you must be ________ (stupid, evil, etc).” To help break through this cycle, this post will cover what I believe are the positive aspects of Progressivism in its American form. The next post will be on its negative components. I’ll leave it to your imagination where the third post will go. Let’s get started!

Progressivism grew out of the Enlightenment. Its basic belief set is that mankind can do better: through technology, through good government, through better education, through being more inclusive. Thus Progressives are the most optimistic pessimists on the planet. They look at what is today, or what was yesterday, and think “how can anyone have let this happen? We must do better.” And they imagine a future–never that far off–when best will arrive. So the first point for Progressives is their passion. They really want to make things better, and they won’t rest until things are.

The second point for Progressives is their compassion. Since they are always looking to improve things, they focus on the least fortunate among us: the poor, the sick, the mentally-ill, prisoners, women, children, immigrants, anyone marginalized by the system. It bears repeating that everyone should be focused on these groups and what places them at a disadvantage. It is undeniably good to be a voice for the oppressed, the misused, the abused.

The third positive aspect of Progressivism is its willingness to change. If you believe things can be better, you must be willing to suffer change. Question things. Don’t accept “that’s how we always did it” or “That’s just the way it is.”

The Progressive Anthem?

Progressives will never be satisfied with the status quo, nor are they afraid of change. Their constant challenges bring vitality to any political environment.

Finally, the Progressive movement is inclusive and bipartisan. My Republican friends may be scoffing at this, but hear me out. Progressives are happy to have any group join in their quest for improvement, and they are willing to extend their ‘big tent’ to newly-identified groups who are marginalized by society or government. And while Progressives almost exclusively occupy the left-wing of the Democratic Party in America today, they originally grew out of a different wing of the Republican Party in the early twentieth/late nineteenth century. I’ll talk more about this in my next post, but Progressivism flourishes when there is broad social/technological change.

In summary, I truly believe Progressivist theory has society’s best interests at heart, that it wants to improve things, that it is open to new ideas and concepts, that it will work tirelessly to achieve a better world. Why am I not then a Progressive? Part Two!