National Strike

There are calls for a national strike on Friday, February 17 - less than two weeks from today.  I am writing today to encourage you to take place in that strike, even if you support Donald Trump.

Why do I advocate such a position?  It seems sort of crazy, right?

I do so for the simple reason that we, the people of this country, need to prove to ourselves that we can do it.  That we can stand in solidarity with each other for one day and pull the plug on the daily routine, as a demonstration of our collective strength.

The "why" is less about what we oppose than about our willingness to stand together, to make a personal sacrifice for our collective goodwill.

Labor has been on the retreat since the late 1970s, and in full-speed retreat since the 1980s.  The might of the worker, whosoever the worker may be, skilled or unskilled, has been radically diminished.  Union membership is way down, and even more critically than the decline of traditional unions in manufacturing, the new service occupations that have come to dominate employment in the past four decades have not been unionized.  As such, they do not enjoy the benefits and clout of the previous generation of middle-class jobs.

I'm a legal secretary.  The lack of union organization in my field makes me uniquely disposable.  At the same time: I'm a skilled worker.  My fellow secretaries are skilled workers.  Sure, I can be easily replaced.  But we can't all be easily replaced.  A prolonged strike of the majority of legal secretaries in this country would greatly cripple the legal profession.  However - legal secretaries aren't organized, to my knowledge (if I'm wrong, please fill me in, and fill in every legal secretary I work with).  So if one of us raises a stink, the stink-raiser can be canned pretty quickly.

Organized labor has been battered so badly that workers are in some ways back to square one, where they were in the 19th century.  Regardless of what we do for a living, we are disposable.  This is true even of some very skilled workers (lawyers come to mind).  If we want to get serious about Making America Great Again, by which I mean restoring the comfortable working-class standard of living of the 1940s through the 1970s, we need to get serious about restoring labor power.

And labor will not regain power without flexing its muscles, period.

Think of February 17 as a test run.  Let's say hardly anyone shows up for the strike, but a few people do.  This shows that a strike is possible.  Now let's say a follow-up strike is planned for May 1.  More people, having seen February 17 pulled off, will show up for the May 1 strike.  Ok!  Now that strike gets some coverage, hopefully television coverage.  Now a strike is planned for later in the year.  Each time, the strike gets bigger and bigger, until finally, you have a true national strike.

This is an action where Trump supporters and Trump opponents can actually shake hands and find common ground.  We are all trying to pay our bills.  Isn't that what the Trump victory was mostly about?  People are fed up about our crummy jobs.  This is true whether or not you think transgendered folks should be allowed to use public restrooms.  We should all be able to stand together collectively and say to our bosses: adios for now.

Such an action isn't selfish or childish; it is flexing our muscles.

I am very disheartened by this Jacobin article which essentially states that the time is not ripe for a strike.  I am a Jacobin subscriber and I generally feel their writing is of a high quality, insightful and thought-provoking.  This article raises some valid points, but in essence, I feel the crux of the article is that we should all be too afraid to strike, that we should wait forever for some mythic conditions to exist before we strike.

The article spends a lot of time talking about the severe repercussions for those who strike.  The threat of violence is a bit 19th century, but the threat of being fired, of losing the job you rely on to support yourself and perhaps your family, is quite substantial.  I do not make light of that, and I certainly sympathize with anyone who feels they cannot afford to strike.

However, I take considerable exception to these two penultimate paragraphs:

Moreover, even moderately effective general strikes don’t emerge, willy-nilly, like miraculous interventions into national life. They are intensifications and radicalizations of already existing patterns of resistance by the working class. This demand for a general strike looks less like that intensification and more like an attempt to leapfrog all the hard, long-term political work that goes before.

At least some of those arguing for the general strike seem to sense that there is an element of bad faith here. For instance, Francine Prose added the qualification, which I have seen repeated in a number of places, that only those “who can do so without being fired” should go on strike. This must be the first time someone called for a general strike but exempted most of the working class.

"They are intensifications and radicalizations of already existing patterns of resistance by the working class."  Like what?  Like writing articles for Jacobin, or blogging?  What existing patterns of resistance are you talking about?  The whole point of the February 17th strike is to establish a new pattern of resistance.  Truly!

And hey -- if the entire working class cannot strike, then no one should?  That's absurd on the face of it.  The entire working class of this country has been utterly cowed by the destruction of labor power over the course of 40 or so years.  To expect the entire working class to strike at once is totally disconnected from reality.

To make the statement that a strike should not take place unless the entire working class takes part in the strike is akin to saying that a candidate should not run for the candidacy of their Party in a Presidential election unless they can compete in all the states.  Maybe a baseball team should not try to get to the world series unless they can win all 162 games in the regular season.  It's ridiculous.

We are not living in a textbook about revolution.  We are living in the here and now.  The time for waiting and waiting and waiting for optimal conditions should come to a close.

I encourage everyone who values their own labor to strike on February 17th.

Trumponomics, the Working Class and Coup Talk

Today I've got something really special.  I am lucky enough to have gone to high school with Jonah Lamb, a journalist for the San Francisco Examiner.  He weighed in with some in-depth analysis of all the coup talk of late.  His analysis is quite thoughtful, clear, and thorough, and I quote it in its entirety below!

First though, I want to talk about a strike brewing in upstate New York that may prove to be a sort of litmus test for the Trump presidency vis-a-vis organized labor, and also a Goldman Sachs internal report on likely infrastructure spending and tax cuts under the Trump administration, which is of note because Donald Trump has surrounded himself by so many Goldman personnel at a high level.

First of all, the story of the strike at Momentive Performance Materials in Waterford, NY is fairly easy to summarize.  The plant was taken over by a private equity group, Blackstone, which has been demanding "givebacks" by the employees to make the plant profitable.  (A giveback is defined as something like "an agreement by workers to surrender benefits and conditions previously agreed upon in return for new concessions or awards" in case you are confused.)  Workers at Momentive have previously acceded to givebacks, specifically wage cuts, so what's being demanded now are further givebacks.  The union (IUE-CWA locals 81359 and 81380) has had enough and has gone on strike.

Many of the striking workers come from the "WWC" (White Working Class) bloc of voters who put Donald Trump into the White House, even if he didn't carry New York State per se.  Donald Trump is chummy chummy with Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone, which actually no longer owns a stake in Momentive, but was previously involved, and certainly has a relationship with the current company with a majority stake in Momentive, Apollo Management.

The striking workers want President Trump to use his considerable (as he did with Carrier and Boeing and so forth) to put the kibosh on the givebacks.  The question is: will he?  It's a situation that bears monitoring because it is a classic showdown between private equity and organized labor.  Whether or not it's fair to target Schwarzman, who is no longer involved in Momentive, he's being targeted (protesters are being bused to his Park Avenue apartment this week), and he appears to have the President's ear.  What will he whisper in it?  We'll find out!

Secondly, the Goldman Sachs report!  Let's remember that the Trump administration is stacked to the gills with Goldman alumni.  To report draws two major conclusions:

First: Goldman thinks that Trump, having moved so aggressively on the Muslim Ban, the Wall, etc., right out of the gate, has squandered any possible good will that might have been used to strike a deal with Senate Democrats on a big infrastructure plan.  They see the likely sum of a Trump infrastructure plan not as a whopping $1 trillion, which is the number commonly floated, but a meager $25 billion a year!  Whoa Nelly!  That does not sound like Making America Great Again to me. 

Second: Goldman also doesn't think tax breaks are on the board for 2017!  That's really something given that the GOP controls the Congress and the Presidency.  You can't get some tax cuts passed!?? Still, apparently everyone's in such a hoopla over Obamacare repeal that it's looking like even tax cuts will have to be tabled until next year.

Just 'cause Goldman says that's how things are going to play out does not make it so, of course, but they're as close as any group of experts can be to the workings of the Trump administration, so their report is nothing to sneeze at.  I personally hold out hope that Donald Trump really will deliver in a big way infrastructure-wise.  But I'm not sure I'd put money on that proposition.

With all my rambling done for the day, let's have Jonah Lamb on the coup!  Take it away, Jonah!

Here are my musings on online chatter about a coup d'etat. It is in part a reaction to my friend James Call and his thoughts on the same. This is simply a thought exercise not in anyway advocation. 

Some thoughts on the feasibility, nature and form a coup de etat might take in the United States. 

First, let's address a misconception that I believe many people have in regards to whom such a coup would over throw. Coups, revolutions and the like are always aimed at taking power away from those wielding it. In the case of this scenario that is the elected government. 

No government that is in power attempts a coup against itself. Why? It already holds all the levers of power and is best positioned to use them to dismantle, say, democratic governmental norms. Hitler's election and then legal wielding of emergency powers after the Reichstag's destruction, supposedly at the hands of a Communist, is a perfect case in point. Call it a coup if you want, but the scenario was not the overthrow of a government, per se, it was the consolidation of rule by someone who already had power. Recall, Nazi Germany had laws. They were just unjust laws. 

Now let's address the subject directly. 

First, it's worth discussing the many forms a coup can take. For instance, there is the classic military take over of civilian government: look to Thailand in 2010. Typically such moves are meant to calm civil discord and are followed at some point by a managed return to civilian governance. 

Other such coups, like Chile in 1973, led to decades of right wing military rule followed by a very curtailed democratic order that was highly shaped by its military predecessor. 

There are also a kind of constitutional coup that contain the threat of military intervention such as Britain in the mid '70s when right wing elements in the U.K. forced the resignation of leftist PM Harold Wilson. 

There is also what I'll call the purge coup. In this case I'll use the Spanish Republic as an example. That Republic, which was itself fighting a failed military coup-turned civil war, had a violent internal struggle which resulted in communist minority killing, arresting and purging leftist opponents from the government. 

Then, in the perhaps most common move, we have coups against coups such as you see in many unstable African countries: One general replaces the next. 

Then there is the failed or Ill planned coup, called a putsch; aka a rebellion that had little chance of success. A few examples: a segment of the French army's failed military takeover of 1963, the 1919 failed leftist take over of Germany, even -depending on your opinion- the recent actions in Turkey. 

All of these examples are mostly here so we don't conflate a coup d'etat with other radical political shifts such as revolutions, counter revolutions, and reactionary dictatorships that take power from already authoritarian government: think Stalin's purges. 

Now back to the scenario at hand. 

I do not believe that the geographical size, federated nature of governance or constitutional order and its protections in the U.S. -which are already under threat- preclude such a thing from occurring here. 

Most coups historically are not occupations of whole countries or even mass violent operations. Usually a contingent of the military, with enough fire power and influence, can get the job done. Most often, in failed and successful coups, the majority of the military stands on the sidelines and waits to see what happens. 

Usually, it works like this: Arrest the president and the cabinet --and as many opposition law makers as possible-- then occupy key levers of communication, administrative and military power and intelligence facilities. All of this could perhaps be achieved by a relatively small force in Washington D.C. 

Recall that the failed coup in Turkey was led by a fraction of the armed forces and probably failed because their attempts to locate and kill or capture Erdogan failed. That meant security services loyal to him kept on fighting instead of giving up, which I think was far more likely if he'd been captured or killed. By remaining at large, and broadcasting across social media that he was free, he gave his supports reason to keep fighting.

The more important key to successful coups I think is physiological. The acting party must convince enough of the populace, but more importantly, the other state security entities, that the government's fall is inevitable. 

Still, even if that is a success in the capital, the likelihood of such a scenario would be some sort of civil war, a common result of coups. 

All of this leaves out an important factor: military culture. In Turkey and other nations --think Egypt-- the military has been and sees itself as a kind of protector of the secular order. When that order is threatened, such as when the Muslim Brotherhood was elected in Egypt, the military stepped in and was seen as legitimate by many. 

But in the United States there is no history of military take over, although a lot of military rule or governance in the West and during and after the civil war. Still, this history is part of a proud tradition inside the armed forces and may perhaps be the most important bar to a coup. 

Still, one scenario might be a totally insane war --maybe the attempted use of nukes-- that would itself endanger the country. Since the military is sworn to protect the republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic, such a crazed order might push some in the military the take the last action any could imagine: overthrow an elected government. 

No matter it's form, a coup that overthrows even a dangerous and partly unpopular leader would leave our republic in a damaged and precarious state far more so than we already find ourselves in.

Coal Mining and Job Growth

In January an estimated 227,000 jobs were created.  That's good news!  The official jobless rate actually inched up to 4.8%, but that's also good news as that means people who had "dropped out of the work force" are now actively looking for jobs again - because they believe there are jobs to be had.

With the labor market still slack, however (because not everyone who could work is yet gainfully employed), wage gains were depressed, as we've all known for awhile, and is not welcome news.  That's the story of the Obama years job-wise: impressive employment gains but a continued deterioration of working-class incomes (a trend which stretches back to the Reagan years).

With regard to manufacturing specifically, 5,000 new jobs were created in January but the estimate for manufacturing jobs created in December 2016 were revised downwards.  And on the minimum wage, there's this nugget of info:

At the lower end of the pay scale, local minimum-wage increases — ranging from as small as 5 cents an hour in Florida and Alaska to $1.95 an hour in Arizona — affected approximately 4.3 million workers across 19 states in January. The widest impact was felt in Arizona, California and Washington, where more than 1 in 10 workers got a raise.

The whole report is short and worth reading.  But for now I want to turn to some other recent news.

The Senate just voted to reverse the Stream Protection Rule, which was a late-era Obama administration move intended to, well, protect our nation's streams.  It would have protected 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests from deleterious effects of coal mining debris.

As the son of a fly fisherman, and a fellow who likes nature, I feel pretty strongly about protecting our nation's streams.  But, you know, I'm not a radical.  I can see a potential case for destroying a stream if it insures good-paying jobs for a sizable number of people.  It's sad to see a stream go but if it keeps some families afloat, it's worth it, right?

Therefore I feel it's worth pointing out that the Stream Protection Rule was estimated to, according to a report issued by the Congressional Research Service, jeopardize 590 coal mining jobs in Appalachia.

That's less than  0.3% of the jobs created in January alone.

Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that the CRS is lying, and the job losses will be ten times higher.  That's still only 3% of the jobs created in January.  What if the CRS is lying so egregiously that the Stream Protection Rule would result in a hundred times the estimated job losses?  That's still only 30 percent of all the jobs created in one month alone.

The report also makes clear that even if the Stream Protection Rule were never passed, the coal industry as a whole - which the report states employs only 90,000 people directly - was due to shrink by around 15,000 jobs anyways.  (I'm not sure over what time period, to be perfectly clear).

Coal industry jobs are frequently union jobs and pay decently.  I don't want to toss them away like so much rubbish.  Still, given what we know about the destructive effects of coal mining on our environment, I have to wonder: is the coal industry worth saving?  It sure seems like the answer is "no".

Tell that to the struggling coal miner, you say.  Ok!  In the words of President Donald Trump: "You're fired."

There is no denying that unionized coal workers earn more than their non-unionized counterparts who install solar panels.  Still, the difference appears to be chiefly not one of industry but of organization.  Consider the following from UC Berkeley (anarchists and hippies - can't trust them!) Labor Center report.  Emphases added mine:

As there are two main types of solar, there also are two types of solar installation jobs in California. The utility-scale union path offers comprehensive training, robust benefits, a decent wage floor and a route up the career ladder, and, as a result, more job security in the volatile construction market. On the rooftop side, the data is much more limited and less consistent. Overall, smaller-scale rooftop installation jobs offer lower wages, fewer opportunities for career advancement, and more limited benefits when compared with utility-scale solar construction jobs. We also note that workers whose skills are limited to rooftop solar installation are subject to the large fluctuations in the solar segment of the construction market, with little to fall back on, whereas utility-scale workers generally gain a much broader skill set through apprenticeship and can work on many types of green and other construction projects.

When workers unionize, they create better jobs for themselves and their compatriots.  When unions are broken, job quality suffers.  It's really that simple.

We can, and should, jettison the entire coal industry, keep our streams and forests safe and clean, and hire a new generation of manufacturing workers to install solar panels and perform other eco-friendly work.  Critically, those workers be organize.  These new "green" workers will have to be union workers.

They will not be if the GOP gets its way.

I suppose I've gone on long enough for now.  The national "right to work" law, as Orwellian as anything else in the books, will have to wait for another post.

Everyone enjoy the Super Bowl, which this year is between these @#&@(ing guys again and some other team.

Iran and Strategy

Things are heating up with Iran via the proxy war in Yemen between Iran and Saudi Arabia (and Saudi Arabia's ally, the United States, which exempted Saudi Arabia from the Muslim Ban).

I went out on a limb a prepared a helpful map for those of you who are confused by the situation in the Middle East!

There's a lot more to the Middle East than this, but if you just can't handle complexity, this map is not bad.  Share it with your friends!

See the green countries?  Those are large, stable countries with formidable militaries capable of sending troops into or backing armed client groups in neighboring countries.  The green countries are in this for themselves and may or may not have incentives or either team up with each other or fight each other.  Saudi Arabia and Iran in particular are bitter enemies.  Israel has done a good job over the years teaming up with Saudi Arabia and/or Turkey from time to time, but these alliances are never especially warm.

Previously, Iraq was a green country, capable of checking the aggression of Iran primarily, but also Saudi Arabia or Turkey, but then we destroyed Iraq in the Operation Iraqi Freedom and ever since Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been free to duke it out in the remains of Iraq.

Donald Trump is correct when he says this:

Later, President Trump posted on Twitter that “Iran is rapidly taking over Iraq,” its neighbor, “while the U.S. squandered three trillion dollars there. Obviously long ago.”

(I take the above quote and much else in this post from this NY Times article.) 

Iran is, in fact, de facto "taking over" much of northern Iraq, as you'd think logically it would do, given that it borders Iraq and then much of northern Iraq shares a faith - Shiism - with Iran.

Imagine that the government of Mexico just collapsed.  That there was nothing in Mexico but the cartels.  The central government was destroyed.  There was a renewed Zapatista movement, etc.

Does anyone in their right mind think that the United States would hesitate to -- using proxy armies most likely, with logistical and armament support from the American military proper -- "take over" northern Mexico, at least?  

The United States, in this scenario, would not be evil to do so.  It would be a responding to a legit security concern.  Forget immigrants stealing our jobs -- this would be a collapse of society on our border.  The United States would take over a big swath of Mexico at least, and other nations might cry foul, but most Americans would not lose a lot of sleep over the subject.

Iran has stepped into the chaos of northern Iraq to impose order there.  GOOD.  Iran is a devoted enemy of ISIS, which is composed in large part of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.  Iran is also a country with many scary external trappings and yet with a status quo that is not all that bad for America:

Until two weeks ago, Iran’s clerics felt comfortable leading worshipers in a chorus of “Death to America” while simultaneously signing a $16.6 billion deal with Boeing. Now, that status quo seems very long ago and the establishment is treading carefully, with even most hard-liners concerned that the smallest provocation could lead to military conflict.

What matters more here -- the chants of the mob or the deals being made?   Sounds like Iran is a good deal for manufacturing workers employed by Boeing.  Make America Great Again!

To return to the rest of Donald Trump's quote above -- did we waste three trillion dollars on Operation Iraqi Freedom and the subsequent fallout therefrom?  Yes.  We destroyed a stable check on Iran, thus creating a situation in which Iran was free to expand its power.  Now we face a situation where the remnants of the army we never fully destroyed (Saddam Hussein's army) have joined a new, terrifying force, ISIS.  We not only wasted three trillion dollars, we helped create an active disaster for ourselves and others for three trillion dollars.

Ah, but do Trump and his pals want to make that six trillion dollars?  Because if we invade Iran, the total bill will come to something like that.  

If we take on Iran and ISIS, we are fighting two enemies at once: never a good move.  If we're serious about destroying ISIS, then the correct move is: partnership with Iran.

Now, lastly: take another look at that map.  What country do you not see on that map?

That's correct.  The United States of America is nowhere near any of these countries.

Given that oil is cheap as hell and poised to stay that way and we are all amped up about opening our national parks to drilling these days, let's skip any continued fighting in the Middle East.  What is the point?  Iran and Syria belong to the countries bordering them now.  Let Russia putz around in Syria if it sees fit.  Israel is a nuclear power and can defend itself.

What does the United States gain from our involvement here? 

Drug Regulations and Fed Moves

I'm once again too busy to give this blog the attention it deserves, but I didn't want a day to slip by without highlighting some of the news we might be missing.

We've all gotten the news about Neil Gorsuch.  There's little that I can add to this discussion other than to point out he's been nominated and that President Trump has encouraged the GOP to "go nuclear" in terms of his confirmation process.  Here's an Op Ed basically arguing that he won't be so bad from a liberal POV.  I am in no way saying I agree with same.  I file this Op Ed under "food for thought" and nothing more.  It's always good to read a different perspective, even if you don't agree with it.

It's of historic note that Neil is the son of Anne Gorsuch, who was the head of Reagan's EPA.  Ronald Reagan famously said “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and that if “you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all.”  It's a shame that an entire party insists on living in the dark when it comes to environmental issues, but what can you do?  Yeah, trees!  Those things that provide us with oxygen!  Who needs 'em?

Anyways, President Trump met with drug makers to assure them that he'd ease up on the onerous regulations under which they'd been suffering.  To make a long story short, apparently the President thinks that it is taking too long for new drugs to hit the market.  Surely, doing away with the requirement that drugs be tested for safety before they hit the market would speed things up a hair.

More intriguingly, the President made vague threats towards the pharmaceutical industry that he may allow Medicare to negotiate directly with the drug markets, which would likely radically reduce prices for prescription drugs.  I would be thrilled if he followed through on this threat, but so far it's all talk and no concrete action.  Prove me wrong, Mr. President!

There's lingering suspicion that Donald Trump doesn't really mean it when it comes to his economic populism; that that was all talk to win the election and nothing else.  It is very interesting that he's chosen to lead with the Muslim Ban and the Wall and not with his big infrastructure plan.  That suggests that perhaps his infrastructure plan is very much up in the air.  The business community has had a tepid reaction at best to the concept of tariffs.  Will the President stand up to the business community as he has to a handful Muslim-majority nations that exclude the most populous and radical ones?

President Trump could greatly allay concerns about his populist sincerity by swiftly moving to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies directly concerning pricing.  Now: will he do that?

I'm going to keep it short today and sign off for now, but I note that the Fed today did not raise rates.   That is good news, since inflation appears to be slowing, meaning fewer hires and fewer raises.  Until we actually get a highly stimulative infrastructure plan, let's hope the Fed keeps those rates down and angers the "strong dollar" people.

Coup Odds and War with Iran

I have to address an article that's circulating right now that's driving me completely bonkers: this medium.com article entitled "Trial Balloon for a Coup?"  Please read it for yourself, if you have the time, before you read my take on it.

First of all, I am bothered by a writing flaw in this article, namely, that the author advances a thesis - that Donald Trump and company are testing the waters for a coup - and barely any of the subsequence paragraphs that follow support that thesis.  They're about unrelated matters, including whether or not Vladimir Putin offered Donald Trump a share of Rosneft.

Vladimir Putin might well have done that, but so what?  What does that have to do with a coup?  Maybe it's a business coup for the Trump business empire, but it doesn't support the planning of an armed seizure of power, an overthrow of democracy in the United States.

The article is full of stuff like that, objectionable items that nonetheless don't support the contention that a coup is being planned (for instance, so what if Trump is already planning his 2020 re-election campaign?  That may be tacky, it may be a waste of the President's time, but it has nothing to do with a coup).  There is one substantive supporting section, however.  Let me quote it in full:

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job.

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

(Note, incidentally, that the DHS already has police authority within 100 miles of any border of the US; since that includes coastlines, this area includes over 60% of Americans, and eleven entire states. They also have a standing force of over 45,000 officers, and just received authorization to hire 15,000 more on Wednesday.)

Ok! I could see a scenario in which the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation attempt a coup on behalf of The Donald.  But I'm going to politely suggest that to pull off a coup with only 60,000 dudes in a nation with an adult population of around 240 million people and a history of no coups ever is not an easy task, especially when a huge chunk of that population is already taking to the streets in very impressive protests that don't look like they're going to die down anytime soon.

The thing about a coup is: you need to have a good base of support to pull one off.  Remember how well the Turkish coup went last year?  Whoops.  A little fraction of the Turkish military tried to pull off a coup and totally botched it.  Instead of their coup succeeding, their opponent, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now has way more power than he had before the coup attempt.  D'OH!

You also have to be well-organized to pull off a coup.  Does the Trump administration appear to be well organized so far?  Sure, it could be a sophisticated front, to appear bungling and disorganized so as to make the coup all that much more unexpected!  But do you buy that?

 

My gut feeling - and this is just an informed guess - is that Steve Bannon and company might just be crazy enough to suggest a coup, or even try to go through with one!  But even assuming the DHS and FBI go along with a coup attempt, what about the CIA?  What about our armed forces generally? 

What we face now is not a spectacular, Nazi-style seizure of power but something far more banal, I hate to say.  From a short, well-written blog by Arun Gupta (emphasis added mine):

If you really want to know the impact of what Trump is doing, start following the commodities and equities markets closely. Trump probably pulled back so quickly on the green card ban because of the protests and the furor from Silicon Valley. Trump and his league of doom may hate the tech industry, but they can’t ignore the biggest companies in the world.

Today the markets are down and the volatility index is up because Trump is spooking businesses and investors. The markets will be a huge brake on his regime.

Indeed.  My basic contention is that Donald Trump doesn't have enough support to pull off a coup.  He is frightening the hell out of everyone around him!  That's how you play to your base, that's not how you pull off a coup.  That might be how you get a coup pulled off against you in certain countries, but thankfully, the one thing that is 100% awesome about our country's military history is that we have NEVER had a coup attempt in the United States.

Not saying we couldn't have one some day!  Just saying that it sure looks like Donald Trump and his little flock of allies (who do their best every day to alienate other powerful people who they could recruit as allies, but seem incapable of doing) lack the polish and planning capacity to pull off a coup.

You know what we could get, instead, however?  Another huge, American-power destroying, war in the Middle East.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis, an intelligent man in many ways, is a devoted enemy of Iran.  National Security Advisor Michael Flynn too has a hard-on for Iran.  Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned the Iran nuclear deal, and now Iran is testing missiles.  

You have a Republican administration which is not off to the races popularity-wise, which is staffed with folks who hate Iran in particular, and in Iran, a country prone to react to any perception of aggression with aggression of its own.  The "rally-around-the-flag effect" of a war declaration is going to be very tempting for an administration manned by a President who apparently worries that people don't love him.  Iran is, from the American perspective, a threatening-seeming, hostile country.  (They chant "Death to America!" there, after all!  Forget all the young people looking for peace and reform.)  In short, you have a recipe for war.

The last major, boots-on-the-ground war launched by the United States took place under a Republican President who was surrounded by advisors who believed that bringing democracy to other countries by force was not only A-OK, it was a great idea.  That administration lied to us, specifically over "Weapons of Mass Destruction," to get us into that war.  With Iran likely having the capacity to fire up a nuclear weapons program recently mothballed but certainly not decommissioned, I could see the same exact reasoning being used by Trump and his GOP supporters to start war with Iran.

Forget your coup fantasies.  There's a very real threat of war on the horizon.  I'm just a guy writing a blog, but if I was a gambling man, I'd put big money on war with Iran within the next two years.

Postscript: a reader asked if the appointment of Steve Bannon to the National Security Council is illegal.  As I understand it, the answer is: illegal? No.  Crazy?  Yes. A hair crazy.

If we decide to go to war with Iran, I'll have plenty to say about whether messing with Qassem Soleimani, pictured above, is a good idea or not.  For now, sleep tight!

Fairness and Federal Lands

So for a second weekend in a row, I took a day off of blogging due to birthing class and also because I had to just sit there and watch history unfold.

There is some talk going around right now that the "Muslim Ban" is all an elaborate sleight-of-hand; that the Trump administration has craftily cooked up a distraction to keep us from examining the substantial work being quietly done elsewhere.  It's an intriguing thesis, but I'm not sure I buy it, because there are ways to pull off this sleight-of-hand without attracting denunciations not only from the opposition party but from many within your own party as well.

I'm of the opinion that if it looks like incompetence, and it smells like incompetence, it might just be incompetence.  But it's totally possible that it's sleight-of-hand.  I don't know, and anyone who tells you they know for sure is lying.

I will say, if the alleged sleight-of-hand had been successful, then so many people wouldn't have noticed that the House just made moves to devalue federal land, in what looks likely to be a giveaway to private developers - a classic GOP move.  That will be the topic of today's post.

But first, I want to address the charge that I am not giving President Trump a fair chance, or that the opposition generally is not giving him a fair chance.

Prior to Mr. Trump's inauguration, all we had was speculation on what his Presidency would be like.  Any charge that he would be this or that, up to that point, was quite unfair.  However, he's now a week into his presidency.  He's moved aggressively, and I assume his supporters are mostly happy that he has.  We can now judge the first week of his Presidency.  He's pushed aggressively for a wall that will not keep immigrants out but will cost upwards of $14 billion (and that's a conservative estimate) and he's pushed aggressively for an immigration ban targeting majority Muslim nations but excluding those nations which have actually exported terrorists before, so in other words, an ineffective ban but one that nonetheless manages to insult and alienate much of the world.  He's mucked around with the official White House website in a way guaranteed to anger anyone who puts their faith in scientific consensus.

It would be quite unfair to judge his entire Presidency as a failure based on one week!  That is certainly true.  We still don't even know what his infrastructure plan will be, and that might well Make America Great Again, at least in regard to most people's bottom line.  (And let me reiterate: I hope the infrastructure plan is a huge success, because I want my fellow Americans and their families to prosper, and if they prosper, my family will likely prosper as well.)  But we can judge his first week in office, because the results are in, and the results suggest an administration with a real "damn the torpedoes" approach.  As a Jets fan I am reminded of Rex Ryan's "ground and pound" offensive philosophy.  Let me tell you, it was not a pleasure to watch.

Anyways, down to brass tacks.  Let's address this Guardian article about the effective revaluation of federally owned and managed land by the GOP-led House.  I urge you to read it, but assuming you don't have time to, here are the key two paragraphs (emphasis added mine):

Ignoring those figures, the new language for the House budget, authored by Utah Republican representative Rob Bishop, who has a history of fighting to transfer public land to the states, says that federal land is effectively worthless. Transferring public land to “state, local government or tribal entity shall not be considered as providing new budget authority, decreasing revenues, increasing mandatory spending or increasing outlays.” 

Essentially, the revised budget rules deny that federal land has any [monetary] value at all, allowing the new Congress to sidestep requirements that a bill giving away a piece of federal land does not decrease federal revenue or contribute to the federal debt.

I suspect where you're going to fall on this decision depends on how you see the following two maps.

In the map above, red - the color of communism, let me remind you - represents the percentage of land in a given state controlled by the federal government.  Seems like a whole lot of waste, right?

That is definitely the argument made by this Forbes article, which cites a 2015 study by Jason R. Mason of Wharton.  The numbers contained in this study are staggering.  Evidently, opening all these federal lands would generate 552,000 jobs annually for seven years and then 2.7 million new jobs annually for the following 30 years.  Holy cow!  By recent standards that is, frankly, an insane amount of jobs.  Taxing private activity on these open-for-business lands would generate $105.4 billion per year according to the Mason report - far from chump change!

If it sounds too good to be true, that might be in part because Mr. Mason has assumed, in his study, that oil will be selling for around $100 a barrel.  Oh.  While the price of a barrel of oil is inching back up above $50 currently, oil remains on shaky ground.  There remains too much oil in the world for a global economy still in the doldrums to consume it all (see this WSJ article or just Google search the topic).  This would suggest that the projected employment and income changes in Mr. Mason's study are highly dubious.

Still, for the sake of argument let's assume Mr. Mason's projections are correct.  According to the Guardian article, the current "closed" system of federal land management maintains 6.1 million jobs annually from recreation/tourism.  So, if the Mason report is correct and the Guardian article is also correct, opening federal lands to drilling, mining and the like would actually reduce employment by about 3.4 million jobs (2.7 million jobs in drilling, mining, etc. - 6.1 million jobs in tourism, etc. = a net loss of 3.4 million jobs).

This post is already getting too long, isn't it?  That's the problem with writing these dang things.  Let me just leave you with a different map and some closing thoughts, although I'm sure I'll be returning to this topic soon:

Ah, green.  The color of nature!  That's more like it.

The bottom line is that much of the West is not suitable for agriculture (READ THIS BOOK, please).  The Bureau of Land Management, which owns most of the land in the map above, allows ranchers to graze cattle on BLM lands.  Grazing cattle is one of the only economic activities that actually makes sense on arid Western lands.  The other two activities that make sense are mining/drilling, and tourism (largely "ecotourism" these days).

As a Northern Californian by birth who spent by boyhood summers in the Bitterroot Valley, Montana, I'm going to have to see much more convincing evidence than I've seen so far to convince me that mining and drilling will generate sufficient employment and economic growth to justify blowing the tops off the purple mountain's majesty.

Lest you think me an extremist, let me state for the record that there may well be many places for where after thorough and public review, federal lands should arguably be opened to private activity.  Still, sleight-of-hand attempts notwithstanding, after Donald Trump's first peculiar week in office, a LOT more people will be keeping their eyes on moves made with regard to our federal lands and will not tolerate a blind giveaway of federal lands.

The Bitterroot Valley, MT.  Wouldn't this look nicer if those mountains were being strip-mined?