The editors of the Wall Street Journal have what appears to me to be a practical suggestion for reducing the likelihood of a recurrence of the riots on January 6:

The anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is Washington’s theme of the week, and waves of righteous anger will roll across the Mall. We agree the riot was disgraceful, but then why not rewrite the law that encouraged Donald Trump’s supporters to think Congress could overturn the 2020 election?

We’re referring to the Electoral Count Act, the ambiguous 19th-century statute that purports to allow for a majority of Congress to disqualify a state’s electors after the Electoral College has voted. Congress’s certification of presidential election results should be a technicality, but Mr. Trump misled supporters into believing Vice President Mike Pence and Congress could overturn Joe Biden’s victory, leading to the Jan. 6 march on the Capitol.

The solution, of course, is repeal. Sounds sensible to me.

Before I leave this subject I want to remind my few readers that I immediately and unambiguously condemned the events on January 6, 2021. Additionally, I believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, submitting as evidence that NONE of the court challenges that have been filed prevailed. That leads me to a question.

So far none of the 700 some-odd individuals who have been charged with crimes in connection with the January 6, 2021 breaching of the Capitol has been charged with insurrection. Does the same standard apply to the election and the breaching of the Capitol? If not, why not.

If so, there was no insurrection and claiming there was is mischievous.

I thought you might find this assessment of Russian President Putin’s “ultimatum” by French Sovietologist Françoise Thom interesting. Since a considerable amount of her information is derived from Russian online sources and are a bit, shall we say, jingoistic, I would take it with a grain of salt. Here’s a sample passage:

The Russian blackmail is explicit and is directed at both the Americans and the Europeans. If the West does not accept the Russian ultimatum, they will have to face “a military and technical alternative”, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko: “The Europeans must also think about whether they want to avoid making their continent the scene of a military confrontation. They have a choice. Either they take seriously what is put on the table, or they face a military-technical alternative.” After the publication of the draft treaty, the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against NATO targets (similar to those that Israel inflicted on Iran), was confirmed by former Deputy Minister of Defense Andrei Kartapolov (Duma Defense Committee): “Our partners must understand that the longer they drag out the examination of our proposals and the adoption of real measures to create these guarantees, the greater the likelihood that they will suffer a pre-emptive strike.”

To make things clear Russia fired a “salvo” of Zircon hypersonic missiles on December 24. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, commented on this event: “Well, I hope that the notes [of December 17] will be more convincing”. Editorialist Vladimir Mozhegov added: “What are our arguments? First and foremost, of course, our most reliable allies — the army and the navy. To be more precise, the hypersonic Zircon missile (the “carrier killer”, as it is affectionately called in the West), which makes it absurd for the United States to have a fleet of aircraft carriers. The impact of the Zircon cracks a destroyer like a nut. Several Zircons will inevitably sink an aircraft carrier. The Zircon simply does its job: it methodically shoots huge, clumsy aircraft carriers like a gun at cans.”

Here’s another important snippet:

In a word, Russia is demanding that NATO commit suicide, and that the United States be reduced to the role of a regional power. According to Vzglyad, America is in fact invited “to stand behind its Hercules columns (sic) and to keep quiet on its ‘islands’. And this means that de facto (whatever the answer to these proposals) the ‘American world’ as such for Russia has ceased to exist”. As a result, Russia will have the upper hand in Europe. The countries of Western Europe are already taken for granted, with Moscow counting on the pool of collaborators that it has cultivated for years within the European ruling elites: it has just sent them a strong signal by appointing François Fillon as director of the petrochemical giant Sibur. Deprived of American support, the “Russophobic” countries that crystallize the resistance to Moscow’s hegemony will only have to bow to the inevitable. According to Russtrat, “Of course, Poland and the Baltic countries will be unhappy. But they will probably be the only ones to oppose the American withdrawal from Central and Eastern Europe. After all, the rest of the ‘Young Europeans’ are guided by the position of the ‘core’ of the European Union [Western European countries], and they do not have stable anti-Russian complexes.”

This “core” “does not share the Russophobic and anti-Russian sentiments [of the Central and Eastern European countries], is aware of the inevitable American withdrawal from Central and Eastern Europe, and does not want to interfere. […] It is better for the United States to come to an agreement with Moscow, while offloading the problem of ensuring the security of Central and Eastern Europe onto the ‘core’ of the European Union, France and Germany, which are in favor of the EU’s ‘strategic autonomy’” Ryabkov rightly points out that the Russian initiative has “a powerful potential for the formation of European security.” On December 18, he clarified: “We propose negotiations on a bilateral basis with the United States. If we involve other countries, we will simply drown it all in talk and verbiage. I hope the Americans do not underestimate how much everything has changed, and not for the better.”

My concern in this is along two lines: actual risk and perceived advantage. Russia’s hypersonic missiles render aircraft carriers riskier than they have been perceived heretofore. But they do not make them obsolete. That is where the perceived advantage comes in. Should the Russians incorrectly infer that the Zircon missile renders the aircraft carriers on which our navy heavily depends obsolete they may be moved to make bolder moves than might otherwise be the case.

I think we have entered a period more dangerous than any in the last half century. I would have preferred that we not have placed ourselves in this position by fecklessly expanding NATO into the Russian “near abroad” and that we not aggravate the situation by taking the advice of “Russophobes” too seriously but that is water under the bridge. I think that we need to make some very clear to our European allies: we will not bear the risks alone.

I have a bit of a problem with this Wall Street Journal editorial, the second in a series on migration induced by the pandemic. Yes, people are moving. Here’s the meat of the editorial:

The survey ranks the states that drew large shares of move-ins in 2021, with a corresponding list of the biggest losers.

The largest net gain belonged to Vermont, where 74% of moves were inbound. The rest of the top five includes South Dakota (69%), South Carolina (63%), West Virginia (63%) and Florida (62%).

One common theme is affordability. West Virginia, South Dakota and South Carolina all placed in the bottom third of states by median home price, according to the index site World Population Review. Nearly half of the moves into Vermont and Florida that the survey captured were among households earning more than $150,000 a year, likely relocating from pricey spots in the Northeast.

New Jersey was the biggest loser for the fourth consecutive year, with 71% of its moves heading out. Next on the departures list were Illinois (67%), New York (63%), Connecticut (60%) and California (59%). The trend here is easy to spot. The states Americans left in droves are among the most expensive in the country. Home costs are high in part because of zoning and regulations. These states also have some of the highest tax burdens.

The popularity of the Sunbelt is often chalked up to nicer weather, but that can’t account for the trend toward the Idaho, the Great Plains and western New England. No matter the weather, the top states for movers have more open spaces compared with the states that lost residents. This low density often corresponds to lower crime as well as greater resistance to pandemic lockdowns.

Americans vote with their feet, as well as their wallets and ballots. They are sending a message to high-tax, ill-governed states.

While I agree with their premise, I don’t necessarily agree with their conclusion and the reason for that is Indiana. By just about any reckoning Indiana is one of the better-governed states in the Union. Here’s the statistics for Indiana. Basically, the state is holding its own. Slightly more people are inbound than outbound and the majority are 55 or over. In income terms the majority of those inbound are in the top 10% of income earners.

My tentative conclusion from all of this is that people are not optimizing, as the editors would have you believe. Some are minimizing. I think that’s how you explain people moving to South Dakota, South Carolina, and West Virginia. I’m eagerly awaiting the editors’ explanation of people moving to Vermont. To my eye it looks as though whiteness were a better explanation that good governance. Have you ever heard West Virginia touted as a well-governed state?

The guidelines for a sensible Ukraine policy are outlined by Katrina vanden Heuvel of all people in her Washington Post column. After a bit of boilerplate about the global pandemic and climate change, she gets to the point:

The United States has no significant national security interest in Ukraine. A civil war has been internationalized into a geopolitical struggle. Ukraine’s people are divided, with millions speaking Russian and looking to the East. The poverty rate is over 50 percent. We’re not about to spend the money and energy needed to bolster the country internally.

The esteemed diplomat George Kennan correctly predicted in 1998 that Russia would “react quite adversely” if NATO expanded to the East. “I think it is a tragic mistake,” he said. “This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.” Since then, NATO has added 11 member countries that were once either Soviet republics or a part of the Warsaw Pact. NATO expansion has, unsurprisingly, driven Russia and China closer together, a strategic debacle that no U.S. president should encourage.

If he’d taken stock early, a sensible Biden might have decided to defuse tensions with Russia so we can focus on real security concerns. Extending the New START arms-control pact, as Biden did, would be only a first step.

Instead of ramping up military aid to Ukraine and allowing loose talk about Ukraine joining NATO, Biden could call for a joint guarantee of Ukraine’s independence and neutrality. The United States and NATO would agree not to station troops or offensive weapons in former Soviet republics; the Russians would guarantee not to threaten them with military force. Both would pledge not to interfere with those countries’ internal political affairs.

If the U. S. has “no significant national security interest in Ukraine”, whose interest is being promoted? It’s not France’s, Germany’s, or Italy’s. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with on that is anti-Russian Poles and Ukrainians who, for reasons I have been unable to discern, have an outsize influence on our foreign policy.

I’ll post a little later on the risks posed by Russia’s hypersonic missile capability but I do want to add that the time to have considered all of these issues was before our second round of NATO expansion, the one to George Kennan was speaking about above. Now our position is much weaker than it was then.

To understand the horns of the dilemma on which the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee finds itself in responding to inflation, I wanted to turn to a subject that I do not think is receiving sufficient attention: zombie companies. Simply defined, a “zombie company” is a company for which the interest payments on its corporate debt exceeds its revenue. The only way it can survive is by borrowing more.

How significant a problem is this? Extremely. Since 1980 the percent of zombie companies was 4%. Now it’s nearly 20%. And we’re not talking about “mom and pop” operations or just a couple of sectors:

From Bloomberg:

Bloomberg’s analysis looked at the trailing 12-month operating income of firms in the Russell 3000 index relative to their interest expenses over the same period. The results paint a grim picture. Almost a quarter of the index, or 739 companies, haven’t earned enough to meet their interest payments. That compares with 513 firms at the end of last year. The $1.98 trillion they collectively now owe dwarfs the $1.05 trillion of debt zombie firms reported before the pandemic laid waste to balance sheets. Boeing has seen its total obligations balloon by more than $32 billion this year, while Carnival’s debt burden has increased $14.8 billion, Delta has added $24.2 billion, Exxon $16.2 billion and Macy’s $1.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

See also here. These “zombie companies” include all four major airlines, Boeing, and Exxon-Mobil.

What’s the relation between inflation and these zombie companies? They’re highly dependent on ultra-low interest rates and interest rates are the Fed’s main tool for countering inflation.

If interest rates are raised some of them will be unable to raise enough additional borrowing to cover the increased interest payments.

My quest to find someone bold enough to provide his or her definition of democracy led me to this op-ed by Jedediah Britton-Purdy in the New York Times. In it Mr. Britton-Purdy, horrified at the state of American democracy, suggests some reforms:

Jan. 6 and the four years before it were a forcible reminder that democracy is a task, not a birthright. Having rediscovered that we must take democracy seriously, we should now put it first in our politics.

Majorities of the people, not the Electoral College, should be able to pick the president and decide who controls the House and Senate. Everyone making their lives in the United States — including the incarcerated, people convicted of felonies and noncitizens — should be allowed to vote.

This might sound alarming to inland Republican voters who imagine themselves besieged by a permanent coastal majority. But in a working democracy, there are no permanent majorities or minorities. Forging partnerships in a truly democratic system, inland conservatives would soon find new allies — just not ones determined to break democracy itself.

Some of these changes probably require amending the Constitution. Hard changes have come through constitutional amendment before: Shortly before World War I, activists successfully pressed state legislatures to ratify an amendment giving up their power to choose U.S. senators. Maybe we can revive mass movements for amendments, starting with one that would make the amendment process itself more democratic. If the public supports a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics, restrict gerrymandering or enshrine a core abortion right, a committed majority should be able to say what our fundamental law is by popular vote, rather than having to go through the current, complicated process of ratifying amendments through state legislatures or dozens of constitutional conventions.

What surprised me was that he failed to ask the next, rather obvious question. In a “true democracy” (his phrase, not mine) what would be the use of a House or Senate? How can any system be a representative democracy without representing the views of the people? It’s a contradiction in terms.

What is also rather obvious is that political parties are undemocratic. Consider that in every state the redistricting process has resulted in conferring an advantage to whichever political party controlled the process. The again rather obvious conclusion from that is that seizing such advantages is not a Republican thing. It is a human thing. National at-large elections for representatives in which the districting process is controlled nationally would inevitably result in a permanent advantage conferred to whichever part happened to hold a majority at the time. In other words, to return to Mr. Britton-Purdy’s terminology, we can have a “working democracy” or we can have a representative democracy with political parties but we cannot have both. Again, it’s a contradiction in terms.

There continues to be substantial fulmination over U. S. democracy although few seem ready to define what they mean. I thought it might be illuminating to take note of some policies that would be put in effect if the U. S. were indeed a democracy (defined as a majority of people supporting the policies):

• There would be a national health plan
• There would be national vaccine mandates covering federal contractors and companies with more than 100 employees
• U. S. troops would oppose the Russians if Russia were to invade Ukraine
• U. S. forces would defend Taiwan if it were attacked by the Chinese
• More robust enforcement of our southern border
• English would be the national language
• Interracial and same-sex marriage would remain legal
• Marijuana wo8uld be legalized (Ibid)
• Athletes would compete on teams that reflect their birth gender.
• The death penalty would remain legal

I would add that income and wealth inequality and climate change are not major priorities among a majority of Americans.

Note that these are not necessarily my views but they reflect the views of a majority of Americans. I would be happy to add to this list but please include empirical support for any proposed additions.

I do not believe that our present government is democratic and that most of those calling for greater democracy actually seek permanent single party rule. For my part I don’t think that greater democracy is possible without weakening the hold that the party leadership has on both political parties.

Update

• Immigrants brought here illegally as children would be granted legal status.
• Abortion would be legal under certain circumstances.
• Ownership of firearms by private individuals would remain legal but gun control would be stricter than at present.

What struck me about Aaron Herzberg’s lengthy list of adverse consequences of wearing facemarks at Brownstone Institute:

One of the most trenchant arguments made by proponents of forced masking is some variation of “it’s just an inconvenience”, so/and/or “why do you have to make such a big deal about it”. (To be clear, this is not a legitimate scientific or factual argument for the adoption of any policy, but that is not what this article is about.) I am largely going to avoid the issues unique to masking children – what is plainly institutionalized child abuse – and for people with disabilities or past trauma, as many of the harms inflicted by masks are readily apparent and easily articulable.

On the surface, this contention seems like a morally and factually compelling argument. After all, if masks had any meaningful efficacy, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile tradeoff to endure a little discomfort to reduce the far worse suffering and death that would otherwise be inflicted by covid?

Yet this argument – “what’s the big deal” – does not square with how many people experience masks and mask mandates, including practically everyone who disagrees with masking as a policy. It is undeniable that millions of people are considerably more tormented by facemasks than what we would expect is reasonable or even possible for something that is indeed merely an “inconvenience”. People generally do not profoundly suffer from trivialities.

is that I honestly don’t think I experience any of them. My greater concern about them which I don’t see in his list is moral hazard, i.e. that wearing facemasks could encourage people to take risks they otherwise would avoid. I just found it interesting to hear how other people experience them.

We were saddened to learn that Betty White had died. We’ve been watching her on television all our lives—she’s appeared on television almost continually for seven decades although it was in mid-life that she gained the most fame and success, first in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then in The Golden Girls. All of her performances had a certain mischievous quality to them, right from her very first television program, Life With Elizabeth, back in the days of live television. The Variety obit observes:

In 1953 White landed her first sitcom, “Life With Elizabeth,” which was short-lived, as was daytime talkshow “The Betty White Show” in 1954, “A Date With the Angels” in 1957 and comedy variety skein “The Betty White Show” in 1958.

She then drifted into gameshows, including “To Tell the Truth,” “I’ve Got a Secret,” “Match Game,” “Password” and “What’s My Line?” White was also a regular on the nighttime “Jack Paar Show” and the syndicated woman’s daytime show “Girl Talk.” During that time she had her own radio show on CBS, “Ask Betty White.”

You can’t honestly say that she was the last remaining performer from the Golden Age of Television but now those who remain were undoubtedly children at the time.

2021 has been a hard year for the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ed Asner, Chloris Leachman, Gavin McLeod, and now Betty White have all died this year.

Try to catch an episode of Life With Elizabeth some time. It’s readily available on the Internet. I presume it’s in the public domain. It’s eccentric—before television sitcoms had settled into the formulae they continue to follow today.