Tag Archives: politics

Broken Windows Enforcement?

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The Trump Doctrine in progress. That’s Matthew Continetti’s thesis in his Free Expression piece, The Trump Doctrine in Action. His subheadline summarizes:

Major military operations in Venezuela and Iran make America, and the world, safer.

This is the mechanism for that increased safety:

Mr Trump cares less about a regime’s structure and ideology—whether it’s authoritarian or democratic, Chavista or Islamist—than its conduct. He cycles between negotiations and war, between economic punishment and military force, until he elicits the desired behavior.

Maybe, though, Continetti’s understanding doesn’t go far enough. Maybe what President Trump (R) is doing is this. Instead of taking on our peer and near-peer enemies directly—they are, after all, the most serious and direct threats to our nation’s sovereignty and freedom–he’s going after their satraps and clients, which weakens those enemies and limits their long-term and larger scale activities.

Is this broken windows enforcement on a nation-level scale? Broken picture windows enforcement, maybe? Or maybe hogwash. We’ll have to see over time whether Russia and/or the People’s Republic of China change their behaviors with the success of one window enforcement—Venezuela—the so far apparent success of another—Iran—and whether the next—Cuba—is attempted and, if so, successful.

A Problem of their own Making

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the People’s Republic of China’s setting up trade-centric “retaliatory tools,” there’s this bit in the middle of the piece:

The rules could put US and other Western companies in a bind: they need to comply with US restrictions on trade with China and often want to reduce their reliance on Chinese production, yet such actions expose them to punishment by Beijing and even possible expulsion from the world’s most important manufacturing hub.

Of course, if those companies weren’t in the PRC in the first place, the PRC couldn’t “punish” them. They’ve had plenty of time to move their supply chains and businesses out of that nation and plenty of warning regarding the necessity of doing so.

Still, there remains no time like the present to take serious heed and get moving on those adjustments.

A Conundrum

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A town in Massachusetts has laid it out. South Hadley had a referendum put in front of them that proposed a 50% property tax hike. Voting it down, said its pushers, would be the end of the town as residents knew it.

Override backers argued that the measures were vital to preserve schools and town services. Without a revenue infusion, officials had warned, major cuts loomed: no school sports or extracurriculars, slashed Advanced Placement classes, reduced police and public-works staffing, and more.

That “more” included slashed Advanced Placement offerings, along with hits to police and public-works staffing.

The town’s residents, though, made it clear they’ve had enough of tax increases with little to show for them but empty promises by the taxers. The referendum was voted down in no uncertain terms, 65% to 34%. The message of this defeat was clearly articulated by Rudy Ternbach, semiretired and leader of the anti-override group Alliance for Fair Taxes:

I think the results of the election show voters do not want to try and fix the government by increasing taxes on those least able to pay. They want more efficiencies in government and less taxes.

Sadly, but entirely predictably, the message was not received by Leftist tax-and-spenders. Lisa Wong, South Hadley’s Progressive-Democrat Town Manager:

“We will regroup and continue to communicate with the public on the changes ahead,” she said by text, adding that the town would also push for policy changes and greater support at the state and federal levels.

Politicians of the Progressive-Democratic Party cannot conceive of cutting spending or leaving taxes alone, much less reducing them. Efficiencies in government? Pfft. Progressive-Democrats only want to increase people’s dependency on government, if not at their own level, then further up the government’s food chain.

This is a message to the rest of us and a lesson to be heeded come November.

Hungary’s Election

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The results of Hungary’s election last Sunday are pretty much in, and the upstart Tisza Party, led by Péter Magyar, has won a resounding victory, 53.6% of the votes compared with 37.8% for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, with 98% of the votes counted. That puts Tisza on track for a better than two-thirds majority in the nation’s unicameral Parliament.

Some on the Left in the US and in Europe are calling that a defeat of a traitorous right-wing Orbán and his party. Others have a different take on the outcome:

Notre Dame College Republicans
@NDRepublicans
Orbán was just voted out democratically and conceded. Meanwhile countries like France, Germany, and Romania ban opposition candidates from running, cancel elections, and surveil parties for “extremism” if they oppose immigration.

Rasmus Jarlov @RasmusJarlov · 19h
This is the biggest and most needed defeat for traitor right in Europe in modern times. It is not a victory for the left. But a victory for sane conservatism that believes in democracy and does not ally with the enemies of Europe. This is what….

In the event, we’ll see. Magyar wasn’t very unifying in his victory speech:

Together we replaced the Orbán system. Together we liberated Hungary and took back our country. Those who commit the sin of dividing the nation must leave power.

Neither was Orbán:

What today means for our homeland, we do not know, time will tell. In any case, we will serve our homeland even in opposition.

It appears, though, that the Notre Dame Republicans have the better read. Divisive rhetoric, or not, this was a more democratically achieved election outcome than those of the so-liberal France and Germany and Romania.

In Which the Editors Get One Right

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors this time. Don’t expel him [California Progressive-Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell] from Congress. Let California voters have their say, goes their subheadline.

Swalwell is about as unsavory a man, let alone a politician, as it gets this side of Tren de Aragua, and the sexual assault and rape charges being leveled against him are even worse. However, as the editors point out near the end of their editorial,

He deserves a chance to explain himself, while accusations alone shouldn’t be enough to drive an elected Representative out of office. ….
The [House] Ethics Committee can take up formal complaints, sift the evidence, and recommend an appropriate punishment.

That’s right. In our legal system, an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a trial court. The legalism doesn’t apply to Congress; each house can expel its members for any reason at all, if two-thirds of its members can be persuaded to the expulsion. However, the principle underlying the legalism assuredly does apply to Congress, as it does to all of us citizens.

Let the House Ethics Committee do its investigation and recommend the punishment it deems fit, but short of expulsion. Let the matter also come to serious criminal trial, and if he’s convicted, the Ethics Committee then can revisit the matter and recommend expulsion—and the House then should vote unanimously for that expulsion.

All of that may have become moot, though: Swalwell announced Monday that he was resigning from Congress with immediate effect. Withal, my claim regarding presumption of innocence remains unbloodied and unbowed.