I think that the best one-liner of the day belongs to Matt Taibbi in his piece on who started the “culture war”:

I agree Democrats need to stop getting their political ideas from Davos and Ezra Klein, but I’m not sure the urgency is in “swinging disillusioned voters away from the authoritarian right.”

I think that by far the greater likelihood is that they’ll increasingly get their ideas from the populist left. Whether that is more or less authoritarian than the “authoritarian right” (by which he means the MAGA crowd or populist right) remains to be seen.

I found the (perhaps unintentionally) funniest piece of the day this one at the Wall Street Journal. In the piece James J. Heckman and Hanming Fang. Here’s the core of their piece:

Few academic papers have been as influential—or as misunderstood—as those by David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson. Politicians and pundits often use these authors’ papers to claim that China’s rise has cost the U.S. up to 2.4 million jobs due to surging Chinese imports between 1999 and 2011. But these studies focus narrowly on what happened to manufacturing employment in local labor markets, not the U.S. as a whole.

It’s true that communities exposed to heavy Chinese import competition saw steep drops in manufacturing jobs and a rise in local unemployment. Crucially, the displaced workers mostly stayed put rather than moved for new work. It’s no wonder these academic papers resonated because they highlighted real pain in America’s industrial heartland. But treating the China shock as a verdict on national employment is a mistake.

There is growing evidence that, while Chinese imports did hammer certain regions, they didn’t cause large net job losses across the entire U.S. Recent research from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that job losses locally were mostly balanced by job gains in other regions. Manufacturing-heavy areas in the Midwest and South saw employment declines, but services jobs sprouted in coastal and high-tech hubs like the West Coast and Northeast. Import competition shifted jobs rather than eliminated them.

and here’s the piece’s slug: “The jobs harm was largely local and temporary, while overall jobs and consumer welfare increased”, a pretty good summary of the piece.

Let’s stipulate that the effects were temporary. Ira Gershwin said it well:

In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
They’re only made of clay

The Grand Canyon is temporary. The pyramids of Egypt are temporary. Everything is temporary. In human terms the reality is somewhat different. That is that the majority of those who lost their jobs as a consequence of the “China shock” have never recovered financially.

The authors’ argument, that trade with China benefited consumers, is true in part. Those in the lowest income quintile, those who devote the largest percentage of their income to necessities, benefited most along with those in the topmost percentage of income earners benefited the most from trade with China. Those in the third and fourth income quintiles benefited least. That returns to the point I’ve made previously about the “hollowing out” of the middle class.

Possibly the funniest part of the piece is their dismissal of the losses of income as “local”. Recently, there’s been an enormous furor over the loss of jobs in the Washington, DC region as a consequence of layoffs of federal employees. Those are local and temporary, too, but that doesn’t end the outrage over them. What I think the authors are actually saying is that nobody they care about was hurt so where’s the harm?

Let’s try a little thought experiment. I wonder what the authors’ reaction would be were the Congress to prohibit Americans from being paid to teach economics. Shocking as it may be that’s within the Congress’s authority, at least it has been since Wickard v. Filburn. I suspect they would consider the damage enormous.

Nowhere in the article do the authors demonstrate that the jobs that have been added since the “China shock” paid as much or more in real terms than those lost. In my view that’s the critical question and they sidestep it.

I have a number of questions about the missile defense system President Trump has been calling for, recently termed “Golden Dome”. I’ll just bullet my questions. The parallel with Israel’s “Iron Dome” is obvious (that’s what the system is called in the original executive order).

• My understanding is that Israel’s Iron Dome system cost roughly $500 million in 2011 dollars with an operating cost of $150,000 per interception. That was for 10 stations (the ultimate objective was 15 stations). If 15 stations are required for a country the size of New Jersey, what would the cost of a system that would protect the United States? That’s, what, four orders of magnitude larger? It wouldn’t be linear increase but a geometric one.
• How effective would such a system be and need to be? The Israeli system is said to be 90% effective. To put that in context you could protect 90% of Illinois without protecting the City of Chicago at all.
• Is it technically possible to defend the U. S. with such a system without also protecting Canada? And a good chunk of Mexico? Whether either country participates in the system or not?
• The system sounds much like the “Star Wars” system proposed during the Reagan Administration. Is that strategy fighting the last war? Or, more precisely, is it fighting today’s war with yesterday’s weapons systems?
• Are the Chinese right? Would such a system be a violation of existing treaties? It sounds like it to me (we’ll leave aside the question of whether China and Russia are already violating those treaties).

The editors of the Washington Post leap to the defense of the practice of district judges issuing nationwide injunctions. After what I think is a pretty comprehensive review of the shortcomings of district judges’ injunctions only applying to their districts, e.g.

Imagine if a federal judge could grant relief from Trump’s order only to those involved in the lawsuits or in that judge’s district. It would mean that plaintiffs across all 94 district courts would have to battle for their constitutional rights as the president aggressively seeks to deport people. In other words, Americans’ constitutional protections could vary according to where in the country they live.

Yes, that’s exactly how our system of government is supposed to work. Otherwise the most conservative district judge in the country could impose his (or her) will on the entire country or the most progressive district judge in the country could impose her (or his) will on the the entire country mutatis mutandis. And that is precisely what has been happening with increasing regularity since the 1960s. I do not believe that is a course for good or even democratic government.

I agree with this assessment:

The purpose of the federal courts, of course, is not to set federal policy; it is to arbitrate disputes about the law. That the courts have become staging grounds for some of the country’s most contentious political battles is a symptom of deeper government dysfunction, stemming largely from Congress’s failure to address those difficult issues, and the executive branch’s increasing eagerness to bend laws to suit its own purposes.

but then they go a step too far, concluding:

Judges, as interpreters of the laws, must have the authority to stop the government from going too far — whether that is President Joe Biden wiping away billions of dollars in student loans or Trump invoking a centuries-old law to deport people without due process.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted during oral arguments, “We survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.” This is correct, but America also survived for decades with this tool available to the federal court system. As the presidency becomes the ever-more-dominant branch of government, it’s one the country needs to retain.

The emphasis is mine. There is an obvious remedy and it is not to make district courts national tyrants. Restrain the power of the imperial presidency and the executive branch more generally. In my opinion the federal government should be one of limited, enumerated powers, restricted to the actual language of the Constitution.

There’s something else they’re ignoring. The Supreme Court does not hear enough cases and decides them too slowly. They are functioning largely as they did 200 years ago. The needs of a country of 330 million people and the accumulated laws and precedents of hundreds of years are not the same as those of a country of 6 million people and a relative handful of laws and precedents.

I would suggest that with the proper training a large language model computer program would be an excellent tool for judges, not excepting the judges of the Supreme Court.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal approve of President Trump’s apparent change of heart on the acquisition of U. S. Steel by Nippon Steel and try to explain it:

U.S. Steel warned that it might have to close its Indiana and Pennsylvania factories if the Nippon Steel deal failed. Mr. Trump opposed the deal during last year’s campaign as he vied with Mr. Biden to become protectionist-in-chief. But he has reconsidered and now appears inclined to take Nippon up on the deal that Mr. Biden refused.

Nippon has pledged to honor its collective-bargaining agreement with the union and not reduce production capacity for 10 years at U.S. Steel mills without government approval. It also committed to appoint U.S. citizens to top management jobs and to a majority of board seats, plus a “full-time board observer” to ensure compliance with its promises.

The Japanese steelmaker recently sweetened its offer by pledging to invest some $14 billion in U.S. Steel operations, including $4 billion for a new mill. While it would be better if the Administration weren’t trying to play deal-maker, Nippon’s concessions appear to have given Mr. Trump the political cover he wants to bless what he calls the “partnership.”

but ultimately appear to be as puzzled by it as the rest of us. They fall back on what I’m told is a wisecrack being used on Wall Street: “Trump Always Chickens Out”—TACO). It’s an example of why I disapprove of the sort of bluster that is habitual with Mr. Trump. Nearly the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Talk softly and carry a big stick”. I don’t think American presidents should make threats at all but on the rare occasions that they do they must carry through with them. Strategic ambiguity has not worked well for us, at least not lately cf. 9/11.

As I may have said before I think the Supreme Court should uphold birthright citizenship.

If I were a member of the Supreme Court (something no one in his/her right mind should want), I would also say that aliens residing in “sanctuary” cities or states are definitionally not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the federal government.

Adam Smith has a thought-provoking piece at The Dispatch on Trump v. CASA, the case before the Supreme Court on whether district courts have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions:

To understand the Supreme Court’s oral arguments last week in Trump v. CASA, on whether lower courts have the power to issue “nationwide injunctions” blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, it is useful to start with a seemingly mundane case decided almost exactly a decade ago, one that exemplified—and accelerated—the modern era of anti-administration lawsuits.

In Michigan v. EPA, a number of states and industry groups challenged the Obama administration’s regulations mandating stricter air-quality standards for coal-fired power plants. On its face, it was a garden-variety technical dispute over the Environmental Protection Agency’s rulemaking process, the kind of stuff that can easily put law students and young lawyers to sleep. (As an occasional law professor, I know this all too well.) The EPA issued its rules in early 2012 and lawsuits were filed immediately, but the lower court needed two years of briefing, oral argument, and further deliberations before ruling in favor of the EPA. Then the challengers went to the Supreme Court; eventually, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled against the EPA.

Mr. Smith provides several interesting strategies for addressing the matter. Read the whole thing.

IMO the slug of the piece, “Do federal judges have too much power—or do presidents?”, presents a false dichotomy. My answer to the question would be that both federal judges and the president have too much power and fault resides in the same place: the Congress. Before you leap to your feet declaiming that the people are at fault, consider the most recent Gallup polling on the matter: only 48% of Americans approve of their own representatives. Where I come from 48% is not a majority.

The real solution to these problems is term limits. Short ones—just a couple of terms. I would also eliminate pensions for Congressional representatives and senators and, if that does not reduce the propensity to serve until you die in office, cut their salaries, too.

The short term solution, of course, is that district judges should not be empowered to issue nationwide injunctions, only injunctions within their own districts. That would reduce venue-shopping.

The judicial branch is the least democratic of the three branches. The Founders envisioned the judiciary as neutral arbiters of disputes and defenders of the Constitution. Sort of like Plato’s “guardian class”. If that has ever been the case, it hasn’t been the case for the last 50 years or more. After all Mr. Dooley, more than a century ago, observed that even the Supreme Court judges read the election returns. The judiciary is the tool our so-called representatives have used to enact policy without leaving their fingerprints on it and threatening their re-election changes. Venue-shopping and nationwide injunctions are just the latest strategies in that practice, Republicans getting their cases heard in Texas and Democrats in Washington.

The only way rule by the judiciary is democracy is when judges adhere strictly to the text of the written law, precedent, and the common law (another way of saying precedent). What we have now is not democracy. I don’t know what you’d call it.

Today Jack (now Ch.Vanderbilt’s Lucky Day) won a five point major towards his Grand Championship. I’ll post pictures when I get them.

For four generations my family (direct line) have not served in the military and I suspect that will be true of the fifth generation as well who are little children now. The last to serve were three of my great-great-grandfathers who were in the American Civil War fighting for the Union. I believe only one saw action and he was in some of the fiercest battles, serving from 1862 to 1865. He entered as a private and mustered out as a captain.

None of the services would take my dad during World War II and both of my grandfathers were too old to serve in World War I.

Of my extended family only my great-uncle Ed Schneider served and he was one of the relatively few unfortunate enough to serve in World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. He was a steamfitter and that was a vital trade in the Navy of yesteryear. He lived to tell the tale.

Consequently, I have little to say about those who’ve died in our wars other than that I’m sincerely grateful for their sacrifice.

I’m also, apparently, one of the few who thinks that the best way of honoring those sacrifices is in avoiding getting into wars unless the United States is actually threatened. We haven’t actually been threatened by war for more than 80 years.