The editors of the New York Times are wary about the situation WRT Iran following the Trump Administration’s assassination of the commander of the Quds Force:

Given the enormous risks to which President Trump and his hawkish secretaries of state and defense, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Esper, have exposed the nation, they must promptly and convincingly explain their reasons for ordering so fateful an action. The explanation had better be good: Mr. Trump’s record of lies, lies and more lies; his impeachment on charges of misusing the power of his office; and his record of improvising foreign policy according to his immediate political calculations have undermined his credibility, at home and abroad. Congress and the American public need the facts.

Another fair question: Why didn’t the White House alert senior Democrats in Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as is customary before a major military action?

I think I can answer that second question. This is a president for whom personal relationships are extremely important. If anything Democratic Congressional have gone out of their way to alienate President Trump. Besides he’s not obligated to notify them of anything.

The editors of the Washington Post explain the situation pretty well:

MAJ. GEN. Qasem Soleimani was an implacable enemy of the United States who was responsible for hundreds of American deaths, as well as countless atrocities in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. His death in a drone strike was being cheered Friday by U.S. allies and progressive forces across the region, from Israelis and Saudis to the pro-reform demonstrators of Beirut and Baghdad. That, however, doesn’t mean that President Trump’s decision to assassinate him was wise, or that it will ultimately benefit U.S. interests.

The consequences of the strike are unpredictable, but there is no denying the risk that the United States will be pulled more deeply into the Middle East and its conflicts. Having made clear that he wants to pull the nation out of those conflicts, and having said as recently as Tuesday that he wanted peace with Iran, Mr. Trump has committed an act of escalation and now is deploying more than 4,000 additional troops to Kuwait as a hedge against Iranian counterstrikes.

It’s certainly possible that the killing will have the effect of deterring further Iranian attacks on Americans, such as the rocket strike that killed a U.S. contractor at an Iraqi base last week, or the assault by Iranian-backed militias on the embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. The loss of Soleimani might disorient and demoralize the militia forces he steered. The Trump administration is clearly hoping Tehran will absorb the blow and retreat, which is why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kept talking Friday about “de-escalation.”

But Iran might choose to strike back, if not immediately then in coming days and weeks. Targets within Iranian reach include U.S. embassies and citizens across the Middle East; shipping in the Persian Gulf; Saudi oil fields; and Israeli cities, against which Soleimani aimed thousands of missiles. Have Mr. Trump and his aides thought through the possible Iranian responses and fully prepared for them? Does the administration have a clear goal? While Mr. Trump was still tweeting about negotiation, some of his aides appeared bent on regime change in Tehran.

While New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is rather obviously of mixed mind about the assassination:

The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad last week was almost certainly a Suleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around. The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was fooled by this.

In a way, it’s what got Suleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed Suleimani instead.

I have no idea whether this was wise or what will be the long-term implications. But here are two things I do know about the Middle East.

First, often in the Middle East the opposite of “bad” is not “good.” The opposite of bad often turns out to be “disorder.” Just because you take out a really bad actor like Suleimani doesn’t mean a good actor, or a good change in policy, comes in his wake. Suleimani is part of a system called the Islamic Revolution in Iran. That revolution has managed to use oil money and violence to stay in power since 1979 — and that is Iran’s tragedy, a tragedy that the death of one Iranian general will not change.

Today’s Iran is the heir to a great civilization and the home of an enormously talented people and significant culture. Wherever Iranians go in the world today, they thrive as scientists, doctors, artists, writers and filmmakers — except in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose most famous exports are suicide bombing, cyberterrorism and proxy militia leaders. The very fact that Suleimani was probably the most famous Iranian in the region speaks to the utter emptiness of this regime, and how it has wasted the lives of two generations of Iranians by looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways.

The other thing I know is that in the Middle East all important politics happens the morning after the morning after.

Yes, in the coming days there will be noisy protests in Iran, the burning of American flags and much crying for the “martyr.” The morning after the morning after? There will be a thousand quiet conversations inside Iran that won’t get reported. They will be about the travesty that is their own government and how it has squandered so much of Iran’s wealth and talent on an imperial project that has made Iran hated in the Middle East.

And yes, the morning after, America’s Sunni Arab allies will quietly celebrate Suleimani’s death, but we must never forget that it is the dysfunction of many of the Sunni Arab regimes — their lack of freedom, modern education and women’s empowerment — that made them so weak that Iran was able to take them over from the inside with its proxies.

I honestly don’t know what to make of it all. It is obvious that the United States has been engaged in a low-level conflict with Iran since 1979, with most of the shooting being done by the Iranians. The Iranian mullahs actually declared war against us then. In the regime’s creation myth the U. S. plays the role of villain.

We also know that we can’t depend on our own news media as disinterested reporters of the truth.

I have also acknowledged that I don’t really understand how President Trump’s mind works How much attention does he pay to his advisors? How much does he rely on what the Israelis are telling him or what his closest advisors are reporting to him about what the Israelis are telling them? Does he go by his gut? Does he act on impulse?

I think it’s clear that he’s stirring the pot. What comes out is anyone’s guess.

Update

The editors of the Wall Street Journal apparently approve of the assassination:

The U.S. President had shown great restraint—more than we thought he should—in not retaliating after Iran or its proxies shot down an American drone, attacked Saudi oil facilities, and attacked bases in Iraq with U.S. troops 10 times in the last two months.

Mr. Trump finally drew a line at the death of an American contractor and the storming of the Embassy. Perhaps he heard echoes of Barack Obama’s failure in Benghazi. Whatever Mr. Trump’s calculation, Mr. Khamenei now has to consider that even targets inside Iran are not safe.

The death of Soleimani should also reassure U.S. allies spooked by Barack Obama’s many capitulations and Mr. Trump’s partial withdrawal from Syria last year. This assumes Mr. Trump will be resolute if Iran escalates and doesn’t withdraw remaining U.S. forces from Iraq or Syria.

Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, condemned the Soleimani strike, but he hasn’t spoken for his countrymen since promising to resign in November amid popular unrest. Iranian-backed forces helped slaughter hundreds of Iraqi protesters, and many Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate Soleimani’s death. The Iraqi Parliament still may vote to push U.S. troops out of the country, but it would be a mistake. The U.S. goal in Iraq is to help ensure Iraqi independence from a revival of Islamic State and Iranian meddling.

The least credible criticism is coming from American Democrats, especially those who worked for the Obama Administration. Their policy was to appease Tehran with a nuclear deal that would supposedly induce its leaders to join the civilized world. Instead the deal’s cash windfall empowered Soleimani to export revolution.

Now they’re fretting that responding to Soleimani’s mayhem is too risky. Joe Biden said Thursday Soleimani “supported terror and sowed chaos,” but that doesn’t negate “the fact that this is a hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region.” In other words, Soleimani was a deadly menace, but the U.S. should have done nothing about his depredations because Iran could hit back. That is appeasement, not leadership.

After noting that a quarter of the State of Illinois’s annual budget is devoted to paying public employee pensions, money that could be devoted to education, health care, or public safety, the editors of the Chicago Tribune go on to observe:

In a smarter Illinois, the Dems would “Let the people vote,” in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s memorable refrain, to permit reduction of public pension benefits earned in future years. But in the Illinois we have, a century of failure to rein in runaway pensions becomes an argument for higher tax rates. As if to tell taxpayers, Gosh, who knew this could happen? We didn’t think about runaway pension costs. Too bad — now give us more billions of tax dollars.

Literally all that would have been needed was to pay the amounts they’d promised into the various pension funds when they said they’d pay them.

How could they have known? They only had a full century of warnings.

On the occasion of the death of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, Jake Novak has an op-ed at CNBC which I commend to your attention. Here’s a snippet:

The killing of Soleimani doesn’t have the emotional power of the takedown of Osama bin Laden, and he wasn’t even as well-known to Americans as ISIS founder Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. But in many ways, taking him out means much more in terms of saving current lives. Remember that bin Laden and al Baghdadi were mostly out of business and in hiding at the time of their deaths. Solemani was busier than ever, directing mayhem all over the Middle East and beyond.

I rejoice in no one’s death. Otherwise I have no opinion of the incident. On one thing I agree completely with Mr. Novak: we have been at war with Iran since 1979. For that I hold Jimmy Carter responsible. It is impossible to do what presidents must and keep your hands clean at the same time.

Opaque as usual, Jeffrey Snider’s most recent offering at RealClearMarkets describes a globe-spanning contest among central banks, political forces, and private reserves. Here’s a snippet:

They call it Rénmínbi, the People’s Currency, a false notion because it is actually dollarized. And the People’s Bank, Rénmín Yínháng, is stuck on constant stimulus that never stimulates. The less dollars, the fewer the currency, the lower the economy. And because this dynamic had taken up the majority of the 2010’s, at the end of the decade it leaves China’s Communists to resurrect the terrifying prospect of Rénmín Lingxiu – the People’s Leader.

The issue is not really about the PBOC nor the Fed, but why they are stuck in the same condition where neither can get its act together. It is what lies in between them, the private reserve system that was supposed to have been fixed long before now – but obviously is not. As the twenties dawn, we can only hope the People of either country wake up and demand more than QE’s and QT’s – while they can.

The PBOC and the Fed, China and the U. S., aren’t the only players in this contest. There’s also the European Central Bank and the various European governments. They’re even more exposed to China’s machinations than we are because their trade is that much greater. China needs the liquidity desparately. They can’t maintain the edifice they’ve constructed over the last 25 years without it.

The financial wizards remind me of nothing so much as another wizard—”I can’t come back! I don’t know how it works!”

The big news here in Illinois, of course, is that Illinois’s “legalization” of recreational marijuana took effect yesterday. Here in Chicago there were people standing in lines at dispensaries to be among the first to purchase marijuana “legally” for as much as six hours.

I put those words in quotation marks because, as long as cannabis is still defined by the federal government as a Schedule I drug, they haven’t actually legalized anything. That makes me queasy as do all state nullifications of federal law.

Although police departments in Illinois have been preparing for the new law to take effect for some time, I doubt they are actually ready for it. How many police departments are actually equipped with enough saliva tests for THC? Also I would expect a rash of law suits challenging those tests’ validity.

This isn’t just a problem for Illinois. One of Illinois’s peculiarities is that nearly every one of the state’s major population centers is on or near the border with another state. That means that Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kentucky need to be prepared as well.

The end of the decade is a good time for “best of” and “worst of” lists and at The National Interest Daniel R. DePetris provides his list of the worst U. S. foreign policy disasters of the last decade. His picks are

• Regime-change in Libya
• Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal
• Giving Saudi Arabia a pass

IMO that’s a pretty good list. Since President Obama himself acknowledged that the first was an error, it’s darned hard to argue with it. It’s hard to think of anyone who actually benefited from it. Maybe a few Libyan warlords.

I was never particularly enthusiastic about President Obama’s executive agreement with Iran on tactical, strategic, and legal grounds but the fact is we had already borne the costs of the agreement. They’re sunk costs. Withdrawing at this point was mostly virtue-signalling.

And I find the cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia completely baffling, whether you’re talking about our support for its war against Yemen or our acceptance of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I don’t actually see what we’re getting for our aid and goodwill.

What are your candidates for worst foreign policy disaster of the last decade? There’s no lack of candidates.

Impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has penned an op-ed criticizing Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives of which he was once a member. ABC 7 Chicago reports:

CHICAGO (WLS) — Former Governor Rod Blagojevich has written an op-ed from prison, in support of President Donald Trump as he awaits trial in the Senate after being impeached by the House.

In the op-ed published by Newsmax, Blagojevich asks if current house Democrats would use what he calls a “flimsy impeachment standard” against Abraham Lincoln for allegedly abusing his power in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison, in 2011, after he was convicted of multiple federal corruption charges, including trying to solicit money to fill Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. As governor, he was also impeached and removed from office.

In my assessment Rod Blagojevich is the biggest dope ever elected governor of Illinois, quite an achievement. He couldn’t have been elected to a local school council without family connections. Don’t bother seeking out the editorial. It isn’t worth reading.

The op-ed is rather clearly Blagojevich’s pitch for a presidential pardon. That’s the obvious explanation for the outlet in which the editorial was published, characterized as “the most influential Republican-leading media outlet in the United States”.

Frankly, I’m skeptical that the health care reform plan proposed by Fred Gluck at RealClearPolicy would achieve the objectives he sets for it. He begins by outlining some sources of high costs in health care:

Estimates vary somewhat, but unproductive costs include:

• Administrative expense created by the unnecessary complexity of a non-system that evolved in a piecemeal manner – $500 billion
• Overutilization and fraud – $600 billion
• Lost revenue from regressive tax preference for Employer Sponsored Insurance (ESI) – $280 billion
• Pharmacy Benefit Manager middlemen – $150 Billion
• That adds up to $1.53 trillion, well over one-third of our total $3.5 trillion annual spending on health care with no reduction in care delivered. Complexity in the choice of insurance coverage, unnecessary subsidies for ESI, middlemen in the pharmacy supply chain, and the unproductive duplication of public health care agencies are the root causes of these costs.

Let’s restate that: he wants to fix our health care system by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, all evergreens. I have one basic question about the above: who defines “overutilization”?

He then proposes his plan:

A straightforward approach to reducing this complexity would be to mandate a single, comprehensive Guaranteed Access Plan (GAP) basically modeled on existing Medicare coverage. All insurers in both the private and public sector would be required to provide this same, separately priced GAP coverage as their flagship product. This would create an easily understood, transparent competitive market for insurance coverage uncomplicated by the largely specious options that now obfuscate choice.

Competition would be based solely on premium price, the effectiveness of control of overutilization and fraud, and quality of service. This single step would eliminate much of the wasteful complexity that now exists throughout the system, provide much greater transparency, and enable substantially more effective control of over-utilization and fraud.

People who are happy with the workplace-connected insurer they have now would be able to stay with them, with one important difference. The money employers now pay for their workers’ insurance would be turned into wage increases and workers would decide whether or not to supplement their GAP coverage. With employers out of the picture, the existing tax preference for ESI that unfairly penalizes the self-employed and others who buy their own coverage would be eliminated.

Private insurers would be free to offer supplemental plans to cover modalities not included in the GAP to those willing and able to pay. These supplementary plans would not be subsidized in any way and, given the comprehensiveness of GAP, would constitute a very small market segment.

I’m also curious about what he means by “modalities”? I’ve been to his web site; it does not define that. Indeed, he resorts to handwaving to avoid defining it.

Although reluctant to challenge someone as knowledgeable and experienced as Mr. Gluck, I think the problem with our health care system is much more basic than that and it isn’t unique to health care. The same problems would afflict any consumer good in which the providers determined what should be provided and in what quantity, helped to set the price, the good didn’t even need to suit the needs of the customer but conform to the standards established by the providers, and entry into the market was limited. Let’s consider an example using cellphones.

Imagine that cellphone manufacturers determined what features you needed in a cellphone, how often you needed to buy one, and set the prices of cellphones. The cellphones offered didn’t even need to meet your needs as long as they met the standards established by the cellphone manufacturers. It doesn’t take much of a prophet to predict that cellphone prices under such a system would soar and that manufacturers would become very, very profitable.

The solution to the problem is implicit in its statement: we’ve got to separate the various components—prescription of services, standard of care, prices, and what is actually paid for or eliminate barriers to entry. I prefer the former. Providers should continue to determine what services should be provided and how frequently. They should be paid for results.

Happy New Year to all! My wife and I followed our regular New Year’s Eve custom, being long asleep by the time the actual New Year turned. We hit the hay around nine.

For the first multiple choice quiz of the year, which will be the greatest anticlimax of 2020?

1. The House delivers the articles of impeachment to the Senate and appoints their floor managers
2. The Senate acquits Trump
3. Joe Biden becomes the Democratic presidential nominee
4. Trump is re-elected president
5. The United Kingdom leaves the European Union
6. Other