Let’s not build the arch that President Trump has proposed for the U. S. 250th birthday.

Perhaps it’s irony, perhaps coincidence, or perhaps we’re both interpreting the tom-toms the same way but Ruy Teixeira’s latest post calls out Democrats for lacking what George H. W. Bush once called “the vision thing”. Here’s a snippet:

Cast your mind back to the halcyon days when American politics revolved around George H.W. Bush and his delightful locutions. A quintessential Bushism was when he referred to his (hard-to-define) overarching goal as the “the vision thing.” He wasn’t sure what it was and neither was anyone else.

Today’s Democrats have a similar problem. Nobody really knows what they stand for besides being really, really against Trump. That makes it hard to have a recognizable vision for the country since it’s a purely negative politics. What kind of society are Democrats aiming for and how would ordinary people find their place in it?

I don’t think there’s a lack of vision among Democrats. I think there’s a multitude of them.

Elected officials of both parties imagine an America that provides them with permanent sinecures garnished with cushy pensions when they retire while they devote their attentions to enriching themselves through “pay to play” and getting donations for their re-election campaigns.

The progressives at whom Mr. Teixeira levels his fire are vanguardists. They imagine themselves leading the ignorant masses to some ever-receding destination but there are far fewer willing followers than I believe they fancy.

The post is full of graphs of the results of polling data which illustrate a common conclusion: Americans see the visions of that latter group pretty clearly and recognize that they have little appeal to them. Here’s one of the graphs which I think makes the point pretty well:

Healthcare is the one interest that average folks and Democrats have in common but there’s a rub, quoting Nate Cohn:

Health care hasn’t been front and center for years. In the final New York Times/Siena poll of the 2024 campaign, less than one percent of voters said health care was the most important issue to their vote [open-ended question]…Ever since Mr. Trump came down the escalator, the basic political conflict between the two parties has changed to something very different than the one that put health care at the fore…

[H]ealth care is unlikely to return to the center of American politics—not anytime soon.

Furthermore, as I have noted increasing subsidies in the absence of increasing supply has the unfortunate effect of raising prices which in turn impels more subsidies. Democrats need to get their minds around that issue.

I’ve just created my first LLM AI agent.

Here’s the latest development in the ongoing argument between the lower courts and the Department of Homeland Security. Madeline Buckley reports at the Chicago Tribune:

In the wake of pressure from officials as well as legal and advocacy groups, Chief Judge Timothy Evans has enacted a general order prohibiting warrantless warrantless arrests by immigration agents in or around county courthouses.

Earlier this month, Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. and a coalition of legal groups and social service organizations
petitioned the chief judge to take steps to prevent immigration arrests around the courthouses.

The presence of agents around court buildings — including the domestic violencee-focused courthouse — has been a cause for alarm for lawyers and community community members who feared that people would increasingly not be able to access justice and due process in Cook County.

Court facilities have historically been spared when it comes to immigration enforcement in order to create conditions in which defendants and witnesses are likely to show up for appearances.

I think it will be very interesting to see how this order fares as it works its way through the justice system. It raises a host of interesting questions including whether a lower court judge has the authority to require judicial warrants in cases in which none are required by the written statute.

Two of the regular commenters here are outraged that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents presently conducting operations in Chicago are wearing masks. Rather than respond critically or sarcastically I want to invite them to propose their own solutions, other than requiring the officers to be unmasked until officers or their families are killed or injured before taking any action, here in comments.

All of the solutions I can think of are more draconian than the masks. Perhaps they are cleverer than I.

I will promote any good, practical solutions to the front page as updates to this post.

Update

One of the commenters made what sounds to me like a reasonable suggestion:

So what we should be doing is having ICE agents wear numbered ID just like regular police and also wear video cams like most police.

which another regular commenter was quick to point out had already been ordered by a judge:

A federal district court in Chicago entered the following order last Thursday:

“It is further ORDERED that all Federal Agents, excepting those who do not wear a uniform or other distinguishing clothing or equipment in the regular performance of their official duties or are engaged in undercover operations in the regular performance of their official duties, must have visible identification (for which a unique recognizable alphanumeric identifier sequence will suffice) affixed to their uniforms or helmets and prominently displayed, including when wearing riot gear.”

As of Monday the agents were not in compliance. I still think it would do some good at the margins.

I haven’t posted about the federal government shutdown and there’s a reason for that. I don’t want to criticize Democrats. Consider this post hortatory.

I think the Democratic leadership needs to get beyond opposing Trump. It’s not enough to hate him and everything he does.

They should propose their solutions for solving the country’s problems, how they’ll work, and why they’re better than the Republicans’ solutions. If it involves cutting federal spending, they should explain what they want to cut. If it involves increasing federal revenue, they should explain how they plan to increase revenue. Vague complaints about “the rich” are not enough. If the plan to increase corporate and personal income tax rates, they need to explain how that will increase revenue rather than, say, impelling companies with large profits and ultra-rich individuals to leave the United States for pastures with lower taxes.

If their solution is increasing economic growth, they need to explain how they’ll encourage that. Historically, that is how the Congress has preferred to operate, i.e. through “stimulus” whether by increasing federal spending or, on the part of Republicans, by cutting taxes. One of the things that was demonstrated rather pointedly during President Biden’s term of office (and continuing into President Trump’s) is that increased federal spending increases inflation and boosts prices.

How do they plan to control our borders and keep illegal immigration at a manageable level?

How do they plan to reduce crime in our cities? Month-to-date in October 18 people have been killed and 57 others shot in Chicago. If that is acceptable they should say so. If they think it is unacceptable, they should propose practical solutions for reducing that number. If they think it’s the best that can be expected, they should say that.

How do they plan to make healthcare more affordable? They have explained that they want to maintain the present level of healthcare subsidies. Increasing subsidies without increasing how much healthcare is provided will cause the price of healthcare to increase farther requiring higher subsidies, etc.

Frankly, I’m not optimistic about any of those solutions or, more specifically, I think that solving our present problems would have been a lot easier if the process had been started 30 years ago.

These events took place on the East Side of Chicago today. Michelle Gallardo reports at ABC 7 Chicago:

CHICAGO (WLS) — A chase involving federal agents led to a crash Tuesday afternoon on Chicago’s East Side, officials said. After the crash, a crowd gathered around agents on the scene.

Chopper 7 was over the scene about 12:10 p.m., and there was a large number of Chicago police squad cars and Border Patrol agents on the scene in the 10500-block of South Avenue N.

A neighborhood resident said a red SUV was being chased by federal agents before a crash in the area.

The Department of Homeland Security said a vehicle, driven by someone living in the U.S. without legal permission, rammed a Border Patrol vehicle that was part of an immigration enforcement operation and tried to drive away.

Border Patrol followed the vehicle for about 30 minutes, and stopped it using a precision immobilization technique, or PIT, maneuver.

Two people, both living in the U.S. without legal permission, tried to run away, DHS said. They were taken into custody.

A white Expedition and the red SUV were damaged.

Surveillance video shows they had been chasing the red vehicle in circles around the neighborhood before the crash.

The report goes on to mention that objects were thrown at the federal law enforcement officers including rocks and other objects. The video above clearly shows one of the officers being struck by a thrown object. Note that the objects were being thrown before tear gas was used.

Throwing things is not protected speech.

In 1948 roughly three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in what was to become Israel. That is called al-Nakba, “the disaster”, by Arabs. The term has been popularized and used by some non-Arabs. Whatever else it was it seems clear to have been an instance of ethnic cleansing.

Since October 7, 2023 it is estimated that 1.9 million Arab residents of Gaza have been driven from their homes, sometimes being forced to move multiple times. IMO that would reasonably be termed the Second Nakba. It differs from the first in that it was primarily a predictable outcome of the murderous Hamas raid on southern Israel. It was self-imposed.

Now Hamas and by extension the Palestinians are without allies in the Arab world except, possibly, for a few rich individuals. It is time for the Palestinians and, indeed, all radical Islamists, to recognize that all they will get in return for terrorist attacks are death and destruction. For better lives for themselves and their children they must use peaceful means.

In yet another op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Bob Hellman asserts that the private sector can build roads and bridges without running into the cost overruns that have plagued public sector infrastructure projects for much of the last 50 years:

The delayed-again Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is North America’s latest infrastructure boondoggle. Built on the Canadian government’s tab but involving U.S. oversight, the bridge had a budget at project launch in 2017 of $4.4 billion. It’s already a year late and $2 billion over budget. No opening date has been set.

Private-sector funding and operation is the answer to these recurring infrastructure nightmares. This would bring discipline and accountability that the government can’t match.

Freeing private investors to help solve America’s infrastructure crisis will require bold local and national political leadership. Solving the political challenges will be the tough part—the capital and the know-how are there waiting.

The initial planning for the 1.6-mile Gordie Howe Bridge started about 25 years ago. After a protracted approval and permitting process, construction finally got under way in 2018, and it was supposed to last a little over six years. But the planned 2024 opening was delayed a full year, only to be delayed again to 2026.

It’s a familiar story. Major infrastructure projects are chronically late, bust their budgets, and are poorly maintained and operated by the bureaucracies that spawned. A highway expansion in Alabama that began at $2 billion quietly creeps toward $5 billion. A new Chicago airport terminal scheduled to open in 2026 won’t welcome its first passengers until 2032. Water systems and transit lines face similar fates.

I agree with him that such projects could be addressed by the private sector. There are a number of questions he doesn’t answer. The most important one is why don’t they? I think it’s because investors find the risks exceed the rewards. I don’t see anything changing that calculus.

A second question is related. Does he actually think that private investors would tackle rural infrastructure projects without massive subsidies? I think that they’d be more willing to tackle urban infrastructure projects with, potentially, millions of users daily. How about rural infrastructure projects?