At The New Republic Jason Linkins remarks on the tendency of the legacy media to circle the wagons to protect Democratic presidents. After taking note of a recent column at the Washington Post by Dana Milbank:

Over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank made considerable waves with a column that rather lustily accused the media of offering President Biden worse coverage than President Trump. At first blush, this might seem impossible, if only because Trump’s actions—through corruption, incompetence, and the need to constantly battle the media—made it almost impossible to cover him favorably. Milbank, however, marshaled some statistics from data analytics experts, who combed through hundreds of thousands of articles to provide a detailed “sentiment analysis” supporting his thesis that “Biden’s press for the past four months has been as bad as—and for a time worse than—the coverage Trump received for the same four months of 2020.”

But Milbank’s most provocative idea posited that the media needed to be “partisan” in the service of democracy. “The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”

Put me down as siding with Ryan Lizza:

Not everyone took this message well. Politico’s Ryan Lizza responded to Milbank on Twitter: “No respectable model of salvaging democratic norms would include badgering journalists to write only positive stories about the most powerful person in the world.”

I did find this amusing:

Still, if Milbank perhaps muddled his point with his long prelude about the quality of Biden’s coverage, by going out on that limb, he successfully brought attention to a more urgent underlying matter: The GOP is the enemy of democracy, full stop. It’s not Democrats who are waging a well-funded war to suppress the vote, reviving Jim Crow–era electoral tactics, installing apparatchiks and gaming the rules to subvert voter intentions, chasing dedicated election officials out of their posts with threats and intimidation, or fomenting political violence. These are the deeds of Republicans alone, and Milbank’s willingness not to subject the matter to the media’s pathological “both-sides” tendencies should be commended.

He obviously doesn’t live in Illinois. Perhaps he should consider what FiveThirtyEight learned: Democrats benefit more from gerrymandering than Republicans do. I would very much like to see him quantify the effects of the abuses to which he appoints. From my point of view it’s not a case of “both sides do it” but rather that “human beings do it”.

As to the meat of the post, what is this, North Korea? We can’t criticize the Supreme Leader? If we’re that far gone, what democracy are we trying to salvage?

At RealClearPolicy Peter Altabel (Unisys) and Reece Kurtenbach (Daktronics) post on the urgent necessity of reversing the U. S.’s “slide” in research and development. After outlining the scope of the problem as they see it, they proposed some solutions:

First, we need to get back to basics. The US must renew its traditional investment in basic research, but, given our fiscal problems, cannot indiscriminately spend. Policymakers should carefully consider basic research proposals across a broad range of disciplines with the potential to ensure national security and public health while enhancing economic resilience and competitiveness. Sectors such as semiconductors, biotech, power storage, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced cyber networking will be the foundational areas of the next generation of technology.

We also have to leverage what’s worked. Public-private partnerships are at the heart of the US innovative ecosystem. Policymakers should develop a long-term roadmap for American innovation and technological leadership which takes full advantage of that tradition. They must collaborate with industry, universities, and nonprofits to prioritize research areas and to strategically disperse R&D investments across US geographies and populations.

Finally, we must grow the STEM workforce. Policymakers must solidify wide, inclusive pathways into the STEM workforce by focusing education on the requisite skills and increasing access to employee-connected internships and apprenticeships. Building STEM skills starting in K-12, increasing exposure to applied technologies, and offering stackable credentials that can build toward higher degrees are the first steps in developing the next generation of American entrepreneurs, inventors, and researchers.

Nice as those sound I think the problems are more basic. If we genuinely want to increase the amount of research and development being conducted in the U. S., we will need make some more basic changes to

• Immigration
• Trade
• Intellectual property
• The tax code

Immigration

The reality is that senior engineers and researchers don’t spring forth full-grown like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Trainees become junior engineers and researchers become senior engineers and researchers. Without that pipeline it doesn’t really matter how much money is devoted to R&D. Unless we restore that pipeline we won’t be doing more R&D we’ll just be paying more for R&D.

Becoming an engineer or researcher is hard work and, unless there is a reward in the form of a secure well-compensated job waiting at the end of the work American students won’t pursue careers in STEM. Real compensation in most STEM disciplines has been stagnant for decades due to a combination of a) importing workers and b) offshoring tasks that would previously have been assigned to trainees or junior engineers or researchers. That must stop.

Trade

Trade and immigration are practically inextricable. When production is offshored production engineering is necessarily offshored as well and design engineering quickly follows. If we want more R&D here, we must produce more of what we consume here. Simple as that.

Intellectual property

This next point will be even more contentious. I think that intellectual property law has become a net impediment to advancement rather an incentive for advancement. I would suggest the following:

1. Restrict patents to innovations. Stop awarding patents for minor elaborations on existing inventions. That is particularly true in pharmaceutical patents.
2. Either enforce patents strictly or abandon them altogether. In a global economy allowing foreign competitors to infringe U. S. patents while enforcing them in the U. S. imposes an impediment on U. S. companies. Make up your mind.

and while we’re on the subject of pharmaceutical patents an enormous amount of what passes for R&D in that area is actually marketing. Let’s not overstate how much actual R&D is being conducted here.

The tax code

This one is contentious, too. There are many reforms I would make in this area but the first would be current year expensing of all R&D expenses. Also cf. above: real R&D only, please.

That’s a start.

Not too long ago the Chicago Tribune obtained and published a trove of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s text messages. Since then Trib political reporter Gregory Porter has been analyzing their contents. Here’s snipper from his latest report:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot privately called an official a “dumb, dumb person of color.”

Ald. Jason Ervin, she texted, was “full of crap.” She told Ald. Brendan Reilly he was “bush league,” and referred to Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez as a “jackass” in a text to another council member.

Lightfoot’s brusque style is no secret. But a trove of text messages, recently obtained by the Tribune, further reveals the extent to which the mayor — who campaigned as a reformer aiming to unite the city — at times resorts to name-calling and shaming of her perceived enemies as she governs the city.

The Tribune obtained more than 2½ years of Lightfoot’s text messages with aldermen through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests — which her staff failed to comply with until the state attorney general admonished them and the Tribune threatened a lawsuit.

That led to the release of hundreds of pages of documents offering an unprecedented look at how Chicago’s chief executive deals with city aldermen and workers.

IMO Mayor Lightfoot is repeating the same mistakes that her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, made and for the same reason. It’s called variously a “Napoleon complex” and “short man syndrome”. They’re compensating for their lack of physical stature by aggressive, even abuse or demeaning social interactions. Such behavior simply doesn’t work when you’re dealing with people who are as or more powerful than you are which Mayor Emanuel learned to his chagrin when the teachers’ union went out on strike on him. The abusive language he had used towards the president of their union did not endear her or them to him.

Richie Daley was no giant and his dad was even shorter but they were a lot more powerful than either of their successors and knew how to deal with people.

I was delighted when I saw the caption on the most recent Washington Post editorial, “The Biden administration gets serious on fighting corruption”. Imagine my disappointment when I found that they were talking about corruption in other countries:

The White House beat a 200-day deadline it imposed on itself this summer for a study on how the United States and its allies might go after global kleptocracy — delivering a report in advance of last week’s democracy summit. Past efforts to stymie self-dealing and other forms of malign finance in this country have mostly followed headline-making scandals and come from the legislature. Think, for instance, of the post-Watergate era that ushered in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FISA, dramatic improvements to FOIA, and more. Yet the salvos have proved inadequate to stop the flow of illicit wealth. Anyone unconvinced need only look at the leaked Pandora Papers cataloguing elected officials buying secret villas with funds hidden in secret offshore accounts, or human rights violators stashing their earnings untaxed in South Dakota trusts.

Anticorruption was a theme of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign, and the document released by his administration is not just rhetoric but already has some teeth. The White House identified underused authorities possessed by executive agencies and directed those agencies to start using them, right away. Some have begun: The Treasury Department, for instance, has initiated a regulatory process on title insurance reporting obligations that would challenge anonymity in real estate, as well as proposed identification rules that would strip shell companies of their cover. The U.S. Agency for International Development has launched a global challenge to combat transnational corruption, as well as a defense fund for defamed international journalists.

There is a phrase that describes this: whistling past a graveyard. Foreign and transnational corruption will inevitably take a backseat to other U. S. interests. More simply, we won’t hesitate to call out corruption in countries that are our enemies but will be reluctant to point it out in countries that we need or we consider our friends.

My own view is that we need to focus intently on corruption in the United States which takes so many forms it’s hard to enumerate them all. Things that need to be curbed include:

• Influence-peddling by present or former elected officials
• Former elected officials or staff lobbying their former colleagues
• Interlocking directorates in major companies
• Public employees’ unions making political contributions
• All forms of “pay to play”

I see that Ukrainian pundits are united in wanting the U. S. to stand up to Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. I’ve seen at least three op-eds that fit that pattern today.

In transactional analysis that’s a game known as “Let’s You and Him Fight”. It never turns out well.

At Fortune finance professor Murray Sabrin predicts inflation in the coming year:

My fearless forecast, therefore, is: Inflation accelerates in 2022. Then, the public outcry over skyrocketing prices and the media reports highlighting how prices are decimating the average family’s purchasing power may cause the Biden administration to impose wage-price controls as President Nixon did in 1971 to take the sting out of inflation before his 1972 reelection campaign. Biden could use an executive order if Congress doesn’t give him statutory authority to impose price controls.

Without price controls, I expect the Fed to raise the Fed Funds Rate, sometime in 2022 and to continue tightening in 2023. Thus, the next recession could begin in the fall of 2023, but no later than a year later. If the recession does not begin on schedule, it only means it has been postponed, not eliminated.

Inflation and recession. Things to look forward to in the new year.

Every so often over the last 35 years Pew Research has produced what they call their “political typology” for the United States. Their most recent analysis was published about a month ago and I encourage you to read it. Here’s the opening section:

Partisan polarization remains the dominant, seemingly unalterable condition of American politics. Republicans and Democrats agree on very little – and when they do, it often is in the shared belief that they have little in common.

Yet the gulf that separates Republicans and Democrats sometimes obscures the divisions and diversity of views that exist within both partisan coalitions – and the fact that many Americans do not fit easily into either one.

As the graphic above, sampled from the post, illustrates, they divide the U. S. political taxonomy into nine groups:

• Faith and Flag Conservatives
• Committed Conservatives
• Populist Right
• Ambivalent Right
• Stressed Sideliners
• Outsider Left
• Democratic Mainstays
• Establishment Liberals
• Progressive Left

After reading their descriptions I don’t feel that I fit comfortably into any of those groups. My political views have been aptly characterized as “eclectic”. I don’t fit the profile of “Stressed Sideliners” although I have much in common with them and I have some basic disagreements with with “Democratic Mainstays” although I have much in common with them as well. My views are even more different form the other groups.

I do wonder if the members of the Progressive Left who certainly seem to have the whip hand in crafting federal Democratic policy these days recognize what a small proportion of the American people they comprise? I suspect that either they don’t care or believe against all evidence that there are many, many more members of of their group out there than actually exist.

I attribute my views to having seen too much of the inner workings of large corporations and federal, state, and local government in all its branches not to view them cynically.

At any rate if you read the linked article you may see yourself. Or, like me, not.

Another case in which I wish people would define their terms. I’m seeing a lot of opinion pieces decrying the decline of “democracy” but nowhere do they say what they mean. I believe that what they’re talking about is better described as “majoritarianism”, i.e. that one-half plus one of the voters should be able to do anything they want. The defect in that strategy is made obvious in the wisecrack that democracy is two wolves and a sheep arguing over what’s for lunch.

IMO democracy is only workable when there’s already broad consensus and consensus has been drastically eroded over the last several decades. Things about which most people agreed are just no longer agreed on.

Other requirements for democracy:

• Rule of law
• Gradualism
• Moderation

I think we’re too large and diverse a country for majoritarianism to work.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal crow over a recent Gallup poll that Americans continues to prefer capitalism over socialism by a substantial margin:

Politicians and think tanks these days welcome the death of free markets as they support more power for the state. But a new poll from Gallup confirms that the American people still have more faith in capitalism than they do in socialism. Gallup further reports that this support for capitalism over socialism has held steady for more than a decade.

Asked in an October survey—“just off the top of your head”—whether they have a positive or negative image of six different economic and governmental terms, 60% reported “positive” for capitalism against 38% for socialism.

Gallup notes that the negative view of socialism has remained constant “even as Sen. Bernie Sanders and progressive Democratic politicians have pursued an expanded government role in addressing healthcare, poverty and early childhood education.” They might have noted that some of the push these days for more government control of economic life is coming from the political right as well.

I wonder what people mean by “capitalism” and “socialism”? I strongly suspect that most people including most elected officials think in terms of slogans rather having any informed views on the subject. In particular how do you reconcile the enduring popularity of Medicare, Social Security retirement income, and the military with support for capitalism?

In considering this let’s make one observation and then define our terms. In every country in the world there are only two basic forms of organizing an economy: a market system and a command economy. In a market system prices are determined by what people are willing to pay and what is bought and sold depends on the choices of individual buyers and sellers. In a command system the government determines what will be bought and sold and the prices that will be paid. There are very few pure market systems or pure command economies. Almost all countries are somewhere in between.

Now I’ve already defined “capitalism”. “Socialism” on the other hand means government control of the means of production. Some people blithely talk about “public control” or “popular control” but other than in very small communities such a thing does not exist in the wild. In practice all socialism is state socialism.

What would a pure market system look like? Just to make a little list under a pure market system there would be no government regulations, no patents or copyrights, no occupational licensing, no health or safety requirements, no Medicare or Medicaid, no Social Security, no public highways, and no standing army. I presume some will disagree with that last. The reality is that a modern standing army cannot be supported solely based on a head tax and anything other than a head tax is redistribution which is socialism. What most people forget is that money is the most important means of production and, if the government controls the money, it’s socialism.

Only the most doctrinaire anarcho-capitalists want such a pure market system. My observation is that most people, including the editors of the Wall Street Journal, square the circle by creating their own fuzzy definitions of capitalism and socialism. When you take such a post-modern view anything can be anything. Nothing has any meaning.

Which do I prefer? Both. Neither. My preference would be for a government focused intently on keeping everything including the government at a human scale. Corporations, NGOs, bureaucracies, all organizations would be limited in how big they could be. The federal government would remain large but it would be limited in its scope to that purpose, to the military, and to foreign policy. Every day my ideal system recedes farther and farther into the distance. I’ve learned to deal with disappointment.