I frequently complain about subsidies around here and I thought I’d provide a few examples of it. The FAA and federal air traffic controllers are, effectively, subsidies to air travel and cities. They aren’t entirely funded by excise taxes and fees. About 15% of FAA expenses which funds both air traffic controllers and other FAA personnel are funded from general revenues. Part of TSA funding is paid by a $2.50 per passenger tax; the rest comes from general revenues.

The effect of this subsidization is to encourage air travel. If you want to discourage air travel, a good place to start would be by leveling the playing field and increasing fees and excise taxes to fund the FAA and TSA fully.

There have recently been proposals to subsidize renters, generally people who pay 30% or more of their incomes in rent, some of the proposals calling for the subsidies to include people who earn $100,000 per year. Such proposals would in general subsidize people who choose to live in high-rent areas, mostly in large cities. It would also take the pressure off cities to increase their population density. Note that the policies that lead to high rents are primarily under the control of state and local governments.

In her latest Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan pleads with Republicans to “save capitalism”:

The American establishment had to come to look very, very bad. Two long unwon wars destroyed the GOP’s reputation for sobriety in foreign affairs, and the 2008 crash cratered its reputation for economic probity. Both disasters gave those inclined to turn from the status quo inspiration and arguments. Culturally, 2008 was especially resonant: The government bailed out its buddies and threw no one in jail, and the capitalists failed to defend the system that made them rich. They dummied up, hunkered down and waited for it to pass.

Americans have long sort of accepted a kind of deal regarding leadership by various elites and establishments. The agreement was that if the elites more or less play by the rules, protect the integrity of the system, and care about the people, they can have their mansions. But when you begin to perceive that the great and mighty are not necessarily on your side, when they show no particular sense of responsibility to their fellow citizens, all bets are off. The compact is broken: They no longer get to have their mansions. They no longer get to be “the rich.”

For most of the 20th century the poor in America didn’t hate the rich for their mansions; they wanted a mansion and thought they could get one if things turned their way. When you think the system’s rigged, your attitude changes.

On the right the same wars, the same crash, and a different aspect. In the great issue of the 2016 campaign it became unmistakably clear that the GOP elite did not care in the least how the working class experienced immigration. The party already worried too much about border security—that’s the lesson the elites took from Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, according to their famous autopsy. They appeared to look after their own needs, their own reputations: We’re not racist like people who worry about the border! They were, as I’ve written, the protected, who looked down on those with rougher lives. The unprotected noticed, and began to sunder their relationship with establishments and elites.

Donald Trump came of that sundering. He was the perfect insult thrown in the establishment’s face. You’re such losers we’re hiring a reality-TV star to take your place. He’ll be better than you.

Conservatives regularly attend symposia to discuss the future of conservatism. Republicans in Washington stumble around trying to figure what to stand for beyond capitalizing on whatever zany thing some socialist said today.

But isn’t their historical purpose clear? Their job—now and in the coming decade—is, in a supple, clever and concerted way, to save the free-market system from those who would dismantle it. It is to preserve and defend the capitalism that made America a great thing in the world and that, for all its flaws and inequities, created and spread stupendous wealth. The natural job of conservatives is to conserve, in this case that great system.

a plea I feel confident in predicting will fall on deaf ears for a simple reason: there is precious little capitalism to save. As documentation I submit the enormous degree of business consolidation. That consolidation hasn’t occurred naturally. It’s been abetted by government action or, at least in the United States, inaction.

Lately we’ve been hearing many bitter complaints contrasting capitalism and socialism but that’s largely misdirection. What we presently have are competing groups of rent-seekers and I see no prospects for anything different. Contrasting millennials with Baby Boomers is misdirection, too. The Congressional leadership like the political leadership in Illinois is preponderantly composed of members of the Silent Generation who accumulated power and fortune through systematic corruption. If they throw the baby out with the bath water you can rest assured that it won’t be their baby.

It is being widely speculated that President Trump will declare a national emergency and start building his wall. From CNN:

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump plans to sign a compromise border security measure Friday and then announce that he is using executive action, including declaring a national emergency, to spend $8 billion for border barriers, a White House official said.

The move will end, for now, a bitter standoff with Congress over his signature campaign promise. But it will likely spark a new constitutional dispute over whether the President is overstepping his authority.

The initial news of Trump’s decision came via Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Trump would sign the bill to avoid a shutdown and then declare a national emergency at the same time.

The White House official says Trump is expected to announce that he will use executive action to draw on a variety of administration funding sources to help finance construction of his wall on the border. A national emergency declaration is expected to be one part of that.

An unnamed “White House official” is barely competent reporting let alone a castiron guarantee but, if Mr. Trump does goes ahead and build his wall, it will be anticlimactic. That has been speculated for months. The inevitable court challenges will be anticlimactic as well.

There is already a constitutional crisis under way but it’s been under way for more than a half century. The Congress has been delegating its powers to the executive branch with alarming and unconstitutional regularity. If the Supreme Court refuses to rule on delegation, as the past would suggest, it will continue our headlong march to autocracy, created by the refusal of the Congress or the Supreme Court to do their own damned jobs.

The editors of the New York Times declaim in preemptive reaction:

With his intention to declare a national emergency at the southern border, President Trump is planning to take executive overreach to dizzying new heights. The damage to American democracy threatens to linger long after his administration is no more than a dank memory.

Cornered into accepting a budget deal that lacked the $5.7 billion in border-wall funding he demanded, the president could not handle being labeled a loser by conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. His solution: Sign the bill while simultaneously declaring a national emergency that, at least in his mind, would allow him to shift funds and order the military to start building his wall.

That the authority to do that may already have been delegated to the president by the Congress never seems to occur to them.

Update

President Trump issued his declaration of emergency this afternoon. Here is the text of the statement:

The current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency. The southern border is a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics. The problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is long-standing, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years. In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending. If not detained, such aliens are often released into the country and are often difficult to remove from the United States because they fail to appear for hearings, do not comply with orders of removal, or are otherwise difficult to locate. In response to the directive in my April 4, 2018, memorandum and subsequent requests for support by the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense has provided support and resources to the Department of Homeland Security at the southern border. Because of the gravity of the current emergency situation, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to provide additional support to address the crisis.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, and that section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretaries of the military departments concerned, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense in the case of the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. To provide additional authority to the Department of Defense to support the Federal Government’s response to the emergency at the southern border, I hereby declare that this emergency requires use of the Armed Forces and, in accordance with section 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1631), that the construction authority provided in section 2808 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretary of Defense and, at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the military departments. I hereby direct as follows:

Section 1. The Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary of each relevant military department, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall order as many units or members of the Ready Reserve to active duty as the Secretary concerned, in the Secretary’s discretion, determines to be appropriate to assist and support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security at the southern border.

Sec. 2. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and, subject to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretaries of the military departments, shall take all appropriate actions, consistent with applicable law, to use or support the use of the authorities herein invoked, including, if necessary, the transfer and acceptance of jurisdiction over border lands.

Sec. 3. This proclamation is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third.

IMO this is a bad precedent and the inevitable court challenges will be bad precedent as well.

I very rarely cite The American Conservative and I don’t believe I’ve ever quoted Tucker Carlson before but his diatribe against the execrable Max Boot and Bill Kristol deserves your attention. Both are faithful advocates for American Empire, something that would only bring death and destruction, including the destruction of anything resembling America. Here’s a sample:

“The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition,” Boot wrote. “The solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation.” In order to prevent more terror attacks in American cities, Boot called for a series of U.S.-led revolutions around the world, beginning in Afghanistan and moving swiftly to Iraq.

“Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” Boot wrote. “To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”

In retrospect, Boot’s words are painful to read, like love letters from a marriage that ended in divorce. Iraq remains a smoldering mess. The Afghan war is still in progress close to 20 years in. For perspective, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France, crowned himself emperor, defeated four European coalitions against him, invaded Russia, lost, was defeated and exiled, returned, and was defeated and exiled a second time, all in less time than the United States has spent trying to turn Afghanistan into a stable country.

and

Under ordinary circumstances, Bill Kristol would be famous for being wrong. Kristol still goes on television regularly, but it’s not to apologize for the many demonstrably untrue things he’s said about the Middle East, or even to talk about foreign policy. Instead, Kristol goes on TV to attack Donald Trump.

a sure path to continued fame.

Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Each of these debacles has turned out very much as I said they would. The lessons are clear. There is no appetite in the United States for the sort of scorched earth policies that would be required to achieve the sorts of victories they long for and even less appetite for imperial occupation of these places that would be required to hold them.

My motivation in posting this is to remind people of something I think they should know. Electrical power produced by hydroelectric dams isn’t green. From Science Magazine a couple of years ago:

Using rivers and dams to make electricity is often touted as a win for the climate, a renewable source of electricity without the greenhouse gases that come from burning fossil fuels. But it turns out hydropower isn’t quite so squeaky clean—and with countries around the world poised to erect hundreds of new dams, that could have big implications for future emissions.

Reservoirs already contribute roughly 1.3% of the world’s annual human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, the study finds—about as much as the entire nation of Canada. It also suggests future reservoirs will have a bigger impact than expected, largely because they emit much more methane, a potent warming gas, than once believed. The methane is produced by underwater microbes that feast on the organic matter that piles up in the lake sediments trapped by dams.

There is plenty of research on methane emissions from hydroelectric dams, upstream behind the dam as well as downstream from the dam. Methane is significantly worse than carbon dioxide in terms of the greenhouse effect. From Scientific American:

While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.

In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But policymakers typically ignore methane’s warming potential over 20 years (GWP20) when assembling a nation’s emissions inventory. Instead, they stretch out methane’s warming impacts over a century, which makes the gas appear more benign than it is, experts said. The 100-year warming potential (GWP100) of methane is 34, according to the IPCC.

The bottom line here is that if you’re trying to reduce climate change due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere building hydroelectric dams is probably no solution and may even aggravate the problem you’re trying to solve.

I’ve spent the last two evenings watching the group judging for this year’s Westminster Kennel Club dog show and a good deal of the last several days watching the agility competitions or the breed competitions. If you’re not familiar with all-breed dog shows, the way conformation shows are organized is that judges choose among the entries for the various breeds to select a Best of Breed for each breed. The various breeds are organized into seven groups: the Sporting, Non-Sporting, Terrier, Working, Herding, Hounds, and Toy groups.

The BoBs are then judged to determine which is the best example of the breed for each of the several groups. These seven Best of Group winners then compete to determine which dog is Best in Show, the dog that conforms most closely to the written standard for his or her breed. This year the Wire Fox Terrier was picked as Best in Show, no particular surprise. WFTs have been tapped as BiS at Westminster 14 times over the show’s 143 year history—more than any other breed.

We actually liked the Sussex Spaniel and Dachshund better but it’s difficult to assess dogs, especially coated dogs, unless you actually put your hands on them. Even at that I’m not much of a judge of terriers.

I don’t think that William Galston is reading the tealeaves quite correctly in his recent Wall Street Journal column when it comes to “Medicare for All”. He says it’s a trap for Democrats:

A political party is asking for trouble when it embraces a position on a high-profile issue that most Americans oppose. But it isn’t easy to avoid this pitfall when a majority of the party’s own members endorse that position. As the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination heats up, the Medicare for All plan first proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders risks pushing candidates into this trap.

The stakes are very high: This unforced error could give President Trump his best chance to win re-election in 2020.

A recent Politico/Morning Consult poll found that endorsing Medicare for All rather than improvements to the Affordable Care Act did more than any other issue to increase enthusiasm for a prospective nominee among the Democratic rank and file. Fully 57% of Democrats said they would be more likely to support such a candidate compared with 22% who said they were less likely, and 37% said that they would be “much more likely” to do so.

So it was no surprise that in a town-hall meeting soon after announcing her candidacy, Sen. Kamala Harris vigorously backed Medicare for All. Yet many observers were taken aback when, citing excessive paperwork and delays in the approval process, she went on to say she wanted to get rid of private health insurance altogether. “Let’s eliminate all of that,” she said. “Let’s move on.”

Ms. Harris’s version of Medicare for All means private insurance for none. Even if you like your private plan, you can’t keep it. And many Americans do like their private plans, which is why they find proposals like Ms. Harris’s so troubling. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey last month found that, while 56% of Americans claimed to favor Medicare for All, support sank to 37% for versions of the proposal that would eliminate private insurance companies.

Some leading Democrats also have doubts about this approach. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who entered the presidential race last weekend, has declined to endorse Medicare for All. So has another potential Midwestern candidate, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who seems likely to run, staked out his position last year, saying “I don’t think we can get to universal coverage as quickly if we try to fight that battle now. . . . The imperative now should be to make sure everyone’s covered.”

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who reportedly is also considering a run, was even blunter on “Meet the Press” last Sunday: “What Democrats are saying is, ‘If you like your insurance, we’re going to take it away from you’—from 180 million people that get their insurance from their employer and like it, where 20 million Americans who are on Medicare Advantage and love it. That seems like a bad opening offer.”

How do you reconcile those apparently conflicting opinions? That 70% of people support “Medicare for All” but they also want to keep their present insurance? I think the answer is that most Americans don’t pay all of their health care expenses out of pocket, want to keep it that way, and see M4A as a way of maintaining that.

At least to me that suggests a framing of the issue that would lead to M4A being a net positive for Democrats at the polls.

I think that everyone is misinterpreting newly-elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement yesterday that California would scale back its ambitious Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail project. I don’t think they get it. He thinks that just waiting a bit will mean that the federal government, i.e. not Californians, will pay for it for them. The “Green New Deal” resolution and various infrastructure plans being pushed from both sides of the aisle tell him that’s a good strategy.

Meanwhile, in her WaPo column Megan McArdle explains why the United States doesn’t have high-speed rail and probably never will. To her reasons I will add two:

• Corruption. The reality of life in these United States is that any high-speed rail program is viewed as a license to steal by everyone involved in the process. Cost overruns by orders of magnitude are par for the course. It’s viewed as a victimless crime.
• Those who benefit most are not willing to pay. Why is the New York to Boston route so criminally slow? Because whatever its benefits the people of Boston and New York aren’t willing to pay for upgrading it. If they were we’d already have high-speed rail, particularly in the Eastern United States where they don’t have mountains and earthquakes to contend with.

The editors of the Washington Post take to their fainting couches over the unconscionable treatment of the Uighur population of China’s western provinces by the Chinese authorities:

China has sought for years to assimilate the Muslim Uighur population into the majority Han Chinese, partially by flooding Xinjiang province with migrants from elsewhere. But the effort to crush the population has picked up speed under President Xi Jinping, whose government set up an archipelago of bleak outposts for carrying out forced indoctrination, to eradicate the Uighur language, traditions and culture. At first, China denied these camps existed; then China admitted that they exist but claimed they are for “re-education” and vocational training. As eyewitnesses have verified, the real purpose is much darker, to coerce the detainees to give up their language and culture. Experts have said more than 1 million Uighurs are now detained, out of a population of more than 11 million. Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uighur Congress, told us there may be 2 million or more imprisoned, based on word leaking out to Uighur families and those who have been released.

That’s a terrible choice of words. The Chinese authorities are not trying to “assimilate” China’s Uighur population.
They are supplanting them, removing them, eradicating them, following the same playbook as used in Tibet. China is racist. Its authorities view it as an ethnic state as surely as Hungarians or Kosovars do theirs. If you’re not Han Chinese, you’re not Chinese.

There is some controversy over the history of the Uighurs but the question is whether they’ve comprised the major part of China’s Xinjiang province for the last millennium or the last 10,000 years. The Han Chinese tend to believe the former, the Uighurs themselves the latter. Whatever the case they are not newcomers, not invaders, not foreigners.

Here’s the remedy proposed by the editors:

China must be held to account for crimes against the Uighur population. Worthy legislation is pending in Congress to address this, and the time has come for the rest of the world to demand admission to the camps, in search of a lost Uighur musician and more than 1 million others.

There are only three avenues for meaningful responses: trade sanctions, diplomatic sanctions, or military sanctions. Since the editors have condemned each of those for China in the past it would be interesting to hear their views on what sort of response would be appropriate. On that, sadly, the editorial is silent.