Month: October 2016

…they know where you live!

With race relations – especially between law enforcement and minorities – occupying one of the top categories of election talk, I thought this article about a neighbor bypassing the courteous knock-on-the-door and jumping straight to threatening police involvement was one worth sharing. Having gotten to know you all rather well over these past couple of months, I am certain that most of you will enjoy the response Richard Brookshire (MPA!) penned to his rude neighbor (be sure to read the whole thing which is posted as an image within the article).

Maine Governor Paul LePage Stopped by a Conservative radio station for an interview on Tuesday, where he gave his thoughts about how Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump should run the country:

“Sometimes I wondered that our Constitution is not only broken, but we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law…Because we’ve had eight years of a president, he’s an autocrat, he just does it on his own, he ignores Congress and every single day, we’re slipping into anarchy.”

One might be confused as to how it is that the good Governor is complaining on one hand about the apparent abuse of power by current President Barack Obama, referring to him as an “autocrat”, while at the same time saying that the Donald should essentially abuse power.  Also confusing is how he is calling for the restoration of the rule of law by saying that this particular potential president should act in a way that would disregard the rule of law.

What is ultimately confusing, though, is the fact that we have to take a clearly insane, racist, overly corrupt clown seriously in the first place, being that he has the title of “Governor” before his name.

By the way, in the interview, he talked about how a Hillary Clinton presidency would “destroy” the United States, stating that “I could not see how any red-blooded American citizen could vote for Hillary Clinton.”

After weeks of indiscriminate bombing, it looks like the besieged may fall in the coming weeks. Russia and Assad have relentlessly targeted civilians, including hospitals and bakeries, since the ceasefire agreement broke down a few weeks ago.

The humanitarian situation is what makes the Aleppo situation so dire. Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity, food, water, and in need of medical assistance. Russia and Assad now seem to be using this humanitarian situation as a weapon, “The Syrian regime and its Russian backers have adopted a calculated approach of exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation in Aleppo as a weapon of war. Their apparent goal is to make living conditions in the city so intolerable that the opposition has no choice but to capitulate.”

We’ll have to wait and see what U.S. policy will be towards Aleppo in the final months of the Obama administration.

In September of 2015, Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was sentenced to 13 years, 9 months, 7 days, and 12 hours in prison, being convicted on the grounds of “public incitement” and “association to commit crimes”.  His conviction, along with that of three Venezuelan students, stem from anti-government demonstrations that took place on the streets of Caracas in February of 2014, where violent incidents broke out.

Looking into this particular case, Human Rights Watch, among other organizations, saw troubling issues arise, including the use of flimsy evidence and a lack of due process.  An interesting note here, related to the “evidence”, comes from the arrest warrant issued for Mr. Lopez, which pinned culpability for his involvement with violent acts during the protests on a series of “subliminal messages” posted on social media.  On top of that, there was little to no evidence shown during trial, save for two witnesses brought forward by the prosecutor to rant against the opposition leader.

That’s not to mention the three Venezuelan students, who were arrested in allegedly brutal fashion soon after the protests took place.  Being held incommunicado for around two days, they suffered abuse at the hands of police and were denied access to lawyers and their families.  A fourth student accused of being involved in the violence fled the country.

Apparently, from what one can deduce logically from last Sunday night’s debate, it is scenarios like this that Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump would like to have happen in the United States.  Using the criminal justice system to go after political opponents.  Often ends well, doesn’t it?

The second presidential debate is in the books and the most shocking thing of all is not that emails were hacked, or that a political candidate has dual positions on issues, or discussions of sexual assault were normalized under a catchy and benign slogan which resonates with most people allowing them to save face in accepting the characterization; it is that a presidential candidate has taken the side of a foreign power whose officials have threatened  our country militarily and have backed those threats with military moves.

In hacked emails it was revealed that a moderate Democratic candidate has a moderate stance on trade and hemispheric relations with its neighbors. She reveals that she hopes that one day things will work so well that the movement of goods and people will be seamless between America and its neighbors. In a shocking revelation, it was also exposed that she is aware that in order to get policy passed and implemented, politicians sometimes need a ‘public and a private position’ in order to get things accomplished. While her answer during the debate might have come across as ridiculous, the statement in itself is no less true. For those that have read or are reading Team of Rivals, a book about President Lincoln, they will find a lot of truth in her comments.

All of this leads me to believe that I may not be entirely wrong in believing she will end up supporting the TPP; which in light of Russia’s and China’s recent aggressive moves, may be more important now than it was a 10 months ago when all the backlash against free trade seemed to cement itself. Let’s hope the election is over sooner than later so we can begin to piece together a new strategy to handle the growing ambitions of China and insecurities of a diminutive “strongman.”

Late last week the Obama administration went public, formally accusing Russia of hacking the US elections. So what happens now?   This news analysis in Sunday’s Times lays out some of President Obama’s options. Well worth a read, especially as you think about your final policy options memo. Aides are paid to give their bosses a range of choices–while honestly laying out the pros, cons and uncertainties of each.

If you want to know what is happening in Afghanistan, read Mark Perry’s article in Politico. I know it’s hard to believe but the war in Afghanistan began 15 years ago today. The Taliban was ousted within weeks of the invasion but was allowed to regroup after we “took our eyes off the ball” and invaded Iraq. Perry, along with retired CIA operatives and academics, argues that the war will not be won on the battlefield. Instead, we’re carrying out “diplomacy by drone strike” and targeting Taliban leaders who refuse to negotiate with Kabul. “We’re signaling the Taliban that they need to choose a leadership that is interested in a political solution,” the officer says, “because, obviously, this conflict isn’t going to be decided on the battlefield.”

I’ve noted this before but the war has received little to no attention on the campaign trail which is a disgrace because the next commander-in-chief will have some serious decisions to make. Ending this war “would require a commander in chief willing to pay attention to America’s longest war and a Congress willing to spend a bit of money on foreign aid, and so far I see no candidate for public office at any level of either party with the competence, leadership and knowledge required for such a minimally successful foreign policy.”

“The Cure for Wage Stagnation” This is an Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur from the American Enterprise Institute. This article argues that lowering the corporate income tax raises wages because, “lower corporate rates create the right incentives for firms to give workers better tools. Workers become more productive when they acquire better skills or have better tools and more productive workers earn higher wages.”

The authors use the sales tax analogy to back their argument by proposing we look at the corporate income tax the same way we look at sales tax stating, “It is widely accepted that sales taxes are not necessarily paid by consumers. If the government charges a 10% sales tax, goods prices go up 10%, in which case consumers would pay the whole tax. In the same way- If a higher corporate tax reduces the return to capital, then capital may move abroad. This outflow could reduce the productivity and compensation for domestic workers, who are relatively immobile. So just as a sales tax might have an impact on the final goods price, a higher corporate tax might have an impact on wages. If wages go down when corporate taxes go up, the worker is left holding the tax bag.”

Their findings are also based on empirical analysis of a data gathered on international tax rates and manufacturing wages in 72 countries over 22 years.

This is a very logical argument and I might have to agree in the absence of any evidence proving otherwise. Although there has been research conducted by the Congressional Budget office and other organizations estimates that 75% to 82% of the burden of the corporate income tax falls to capital, there is no research on who the other 18% to 25% of tax burden affect.

The two op-eds I read for this week’s assignment addressed the topic of immigration, however one focused on the role played by the Supreme Court, and the other was a more generalized overview of the immigration issue as it is being approached by members of the more conservative side of our nation.

This op-ed from the New York Times titled The Supreme Court’s Silent Failure on Immigration written by Linda Greenhouse was the more persuasive of the two articles. It was well organized and focused on one very specific instance in recent history, backing up all opinions with just the right amount of facts for me to feel like there was a sufficient amount of evidence while also not feeling bogged down by excessive data. It made an emotional appeal by showing how the decisions of the Supreme Court affect real people, and it quoted one other article, titled “Giving Reasons” by Frederick Schauer, which was poignant enough to stick with me:  “Announcing an outcome without giving a reason is consistent with the exercise of authority,” he writes, while giving reasons is “a sign of respect,” “a way of opening a conversation rather than forestalling one.”

The other article I read came from the National Review and was titled Fishtown Needs Less Immigration, written by Mark Krikorian – the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. The article focuses on Charles Murray’s changing views about immigration, broadly stated as switching from a typically Libertarian perspective of supporting high levels of immigration, to a more conservative Trump-supporting view of setting high restrictions on immigration. I tried my best to go into this with an open mind and not have a negative attitude toward the article before having even read it, however I have to say that an article that is openly biased and unapologetically partisan does not lend itself to being “persuasive” per se. It immediately put me in a mindset where I was not even willing to consider the author’s opinions as legitimate. Aside from that, I had a hard time following the article due to the excess of other works and authors quoted throughout. It ended with “Welcome to the fight, Charles. This time I know our side will win” which just felt gauchely immature. (I’m a little ashamed that a fellow Armenian wrote this!)

In my search for OpEd’s I came across these two (here and here) that I think are both good.

When I was looking at them what I found that I liked about both was that they came to a cogent final point – a recommendation for policy. When the OpEd does this well I think it serves a very important purpose. It serves to present alternatives and analysis that the reader may not have considered.