There’s a passage from a recent PBS News Hours featuring David Brooks that I think is significant. From the transcript thoughtfully provided by RealClearPolitics:

David Brooks: Yes, I don’t know about that.

But those of us who are trying to rebut populists like Trump have the disadvantage that our elites really do stink. And this is an advantage — example of that.

It was sort of an open secret that the DNC was on Hillary Clinton’s side. We saw it from the schedule of the debates all through the year. They didn’t want to have them, because they didn’t want to give Sanders the platform.

But this goes beyond what even I imagined was the level of collusion. It’s a pretty sleazy economic takeover of a party apparatus, against the bylaws of that apparatus.

It’s just not something a normal campaign that respects institutions and how things should work should do. And so they colluded, apparently, according to Donna Brazile, in a pretty major way. And if you were a Sanders person, you have every right to be completely upset.

A point Pat Lang has been making for some time is that the establishments of both political parties and their apparat, the media, and the federal bureaucracy are presently attempting what he refers to as a “soft coup”. The worst thing that could happen to the country isn’t if they should fail, as many anti-Trumpers think. It’s if they succeed because if they do we cease even having a façade of democracy and the rule of law.

What has been verified this week is that it isn’t only Donald Trump who has a lack of respect for our civil institutions and the rule of law. If Hillary Clinton had won the election, the president would have had exactly those same failings.

One of the other things I found interesting in the exchange cited above is that Mark Shields very clearly has the same take on President Obama that I did and was beaten about the head and shoulders for on several occasions: he didn’t actually like being president, doing what presidents do:

And President Obama just didn’t like politics. He didn’t like the company of politicians. The Democrats lost 979 state legislative seats, 63 House seats, 12 Senate seats. In 19 states, they lost control of both houses of legislature and the governorship during his time.

He didn’t go out and recruit. He was great himself, but not much for — he didn’t like the business. He didn’t like the company of politicians.

But here’s the critical point: President Obama had those failings, too. That’s demonstrable from the miserable record of losses his administration had in cases before the Supreme Court, in his handling of DACA, and any number of other moves by him and his administration.

If we’re going to have a government that is “of laws, not of men” as John Adams put it, we will need to care for process more or at least as much as outcomes. I think that will require lowering the stakes.

At the Washington Free Beacon Matthew Continetti in a pretty good post explains why the Obama coalition fell apart and why the Democratic Party is self-destructing after their election loss, now one year ago. Here’s the concluding paragraph:

“Obama and Clinton,” writes Stan Greenberg, “lived in a cosmopolitan and professional America that wasn’t very angry about the state of the country, even if many of the groups in the Clinton coalition were struggling and angry.” But Bernie Sanders, and later Donald Trump, was angry, and offered alternatives that, however flawed, at least seemed to acknowledge the crisis. So the Obama coalition fell apart. And as long as Democrats prefer the safety of the sanity bubble to the realities of America in 2017, that coalition is not likely to be put back together anytime soon.

I’m not sure there ever was an “Obama coalition”. I think that whatever it was supported Obama personally and without Obama it couldn’t be depended on.

What I think that Mr. Continetti misses is the sense of entitlement that the technocrats that have been running the Democratic Party feel. They don’t own the positions they hold. They were put there, ultimately by people with real life needs, and catering to their most reliable supporters alone while ignoring those real people with real life needs is a ticket to Nowheresville.

A trailer in Hope, Arkansas is the real world. A posh meeting at the Marriott Marquis isn’t. It’s a bubble but not a “sanity bubble”.

Let’s consider some major near term national risks:

1. Major recession
2. Nuclear exchange with North Korea
3. Terrorist attack within the United States in which more than 100 people are killed.
4. Environmental catastrophe (storm, earthquake, etc.) that seriously affects 10% or more of the American people and in which 1,000 or more people die.
5. Civil war
6. Cyberattack, solar storm, or EMP with serious real consequences which affects 10% or more of the American people and in which people die.
7. Epidemic, particularly of some new disease.

To place some of those into perspective the fires in Northern California this year don’t qualify under D but Hurricane Katrina does.

Here are my questions. Which of those have a 50% or greater likelihood of occurring within the next 2 years? Can we mitigate the risks of any of the items in the list? Should we?

I don’t think that any of those risks have a 50% or greater likelihood and I think the only one against which we should take steps to mitigate is F.

If you can think of any other comparable disasters I haven’t mentioned, put them in comments and I’ll consider adding them to the list.

I hate to try to lecture someone about issues about which they should know more than I but I have a basic disagreement with Husain Haqqani’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. In it Mr. Haqqani urges us to “prepare for Jihad 3.0”:

Just as the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan soon after 9/11 did not mark the end of al Qaeda, extremist forces in the Muslim world will continue to resuscitate themselves in other forms, in other theaters. If al Qaeda was Jihad 1.0 in our era, and ISIS was Jihad 2.0, we should now prepare for Jihad 3.0. Islamism will continue to be a U.S. national-security concern for years to come.

The New York attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, did not match the standard profile of a jihadi terrorist. He was likely self-radicalized, did not overtly belong to a major terrorist group, and would not have been denied entry under President Trump’s “travel ban” due to his country of origin.

In trying to re-create an Islamic state, radical Islamists draw inspiration from 14 centuries of history. It is important to understand the various Muslim “revivalist” movements, involving various degrees of violence and challenges to the global order of the time. Contemporary radicals often reach into the past to find models for organization and mobilization

It is not a coincidence that al Qaeda (literally “the base”) tried to establish itself first in Sudan before finding a home in Afghanistan. Both Sudan and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region had experienced jihad against European powers resulting in short-lived Islamic states in relatively recent times.

ISIS’ choice of Syria and Iraq to declare a caliphate was also a function of the Islamist reverence for historic precedents. Damascus was the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750), and Baghdad was the base of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258).

In Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad declared himself Mahdi (“the reviver”) and established an unrecognized state from 1885-99 before being defeated by the British. The Mahdists terrorized locals, persecuted religious minorities (notably Coptic Christians), revived the slave trade, and challenged Egypt and its protector, Britain. The death of the movement’s founder in 1885 did not mark the end of jihad.

Eventually, the British defeated the Mahdists militarily with an Anglo-Egyptian force. They also used traditional religious and tribal structures and institutions to challenge Mahdist ideology. Today the Mahdists exist as a Sufi order rather than an extremist group.

Similarly, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area became the base for the jihad movement of Syed Ahmed Barelvi in 1826. Just as Osama bin Laden moved from Saudi Arabia, giving up a comfortable life, Syed Ahmed came from northeastern Indian nobility. He mobilized funds throughout the subcontinent, moved it through the hawala system, and bought arms to use against the British-aligned Sikh empire along the border of modern-day Afghanistan.

Although he was killed in 1831, ending his short-lived Islamic state, Syed Ahmed’s followers continued their random stabbing campaign against the British for another 70 years. Driving cars or trucks into crowds is today’s equivalent of that terrorist campaign.

Eventually, the British deployed military and intelligence means to defeat the jihadists. They also discredited the terrorists’ beliefs by supporting Muslim leaders who opposed radical ideas.

In the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire had less success in dealing with the Wahhabis, who fought the empire for control over the Arabian Peninsula through much of the 19th century. After creating the modern state of Saudi Arabia in 1932, the Wahhabis modified their approach to international relations, though not their theology. Al Qaeda and ISIS manifest the more radical beliefs of the Wahhabis and, though opposed by the modern state of Saudi Arabia, can be construed as a continuation of their Wahhabi teaching.

The U.S. is not capable of whole-scale changes to Islamic theology, nor is it in America’s purview. And portraying the contemporary struggle as a battle with Islam risks making the world’s Muslim population—1.8 billion people—Islamic State’s recruiting pool.

Islam means different things to different people and has been practiced in many ways among various sects across the world and throughout time. The doctrine of jihad is open to interpretation, much like the Christian notion of “just war.” Muslims who consider Islam a religion, not a political ideology, and who pursue piety, not conquest, remain important partners for the U.S.

The U.S. must re-evaluate its alliances in the Muslim world based on whether or not partners encourage extremism. Saudi Arabia’s recent avowal to teach moderation in religion, emulating the United Arab Emirates’ campaign against radical Islamism, deserves American support, as does Morocco’s decision to work with the Holocaust Memorial Museum to educate its people about the Holocaust and teach tolerance.

On the other hand, Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s decision to include jihadi teachings in its school curriculum indicate their support of radicalism.

Above all, the U.S. must focus on defeating radical Islamist ideology, not just its periodic manifestation in terrorist attacks.

Here’s the problem. Violent radical political Islam is endemic in Islam because

1. Like Christianity Islam is a universal religion.
2. Islam has no magisterium (officlal and authoritative interpretation of doctrine).
3. Islam isn’t just theology. It’s also a legal, social, and political system.
4. Unlike Christianity Islam was spread by the sword from its very beginnings, something of which Muslims are aware.

My point isn’t that all Muslims are violent radicals. I think that’s an error. My point is that there will always be a certain number of violent radical Islamists, modern technology makes it easier for them to associate with one another, and for them the incentives all point in the direction of violent jihad.

The notion that we can “defeat” violent radical Islamism is based on false premises. Our choices are to tolerate it and a few thousand people murdered in its name every year, eradicate it along with the a billion Muslims, or quarantine it also along with a billion Muslims. I reject the second alternative outright and there just isn’t support for the last so we’ll try the first alternative.

It’s a gamble. Islam tends not to survive prolonged contact with modernity (Christianity is having its problems there, too). Maybe we can outwait it. That’s the gamble.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are unenthusiastic about the Republicans’ template for tax reform, characterizing it as “half a tax reform”. The reforms to the corporate income tax are adequate but they’re dissatisfied with the changes to the individual income tax:

The dispiriting news is on the individual side. The House would double the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples. This would improve simplicity for millions, and it compensates for the bill’s elimination of the personal exemption. But nearly half of American filers already owe no income taxes, and the larger deduction would make the federal fisc even more dependent on a smaller pool of taxpayers.

This is far better than the House bill’s new “family credit,” which increases the child credit to $1,600 from $1,000 in a forlorn attempt to appease the income redistributionists of the right like Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio. The credit would also offer an additional $300 for each parent and another $300 for each “non-child dependent.” The credits would phase out for married couples at $230,000 of income. Does anyone think a mid-level manager at J.P. Morgan deserves a subsidy to raise children?

The House also gradually makes more of the $1,600 credit refundable. In other words, this will be a check in the mail for those who owe nothing in taxes, which discourages work. The family credits cost $640 billion over 10 years in lost revenue with zero growth payoff. To make up the difference, the House keeps the top personal rate at 39.6%, on top of the 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge that Republicans failed to repeal. This would become the fourth tax bracket and kick in at $1 million for couples—half that for individuals—with 12%, 25% and 35% brackets below.

This top rate is a surrender to Democratic class warriors, though Republicans also fear that President Trump would sandbag them. No Members want to vote for a lower top rate and then have Mr. Trump tweet that they’re “mean,” as he did on health care. This is where presidential flightiness and lack of principle have a policy cost. Ideological surrender also gets Republicans nothing politically as Democrats are still attacking the House plan as a sop to the rich.

Here and there the House plan includes some good news on individual loopholes, such as eliminating the state and local deduction. The bill carves out an exception for property taxes, capped at $10,000, to win over New York and California Republicans, if the House can hold that cap. Another good move is a $500,000 cap on mortgage interest for new homes, and no more tax breaks for second residences. The Realtors will go thermonuclear, but then they refused to support the House blueprint that left the deduction untouched.

The overall impact of the individual tax changes is little reform but more income redistribution. The long-term damage to the tax-cutting cause will also be considerable. Adding credits and deductions for individuals makes rate-cutting that much harder since the affluent pay the vast bulk of all income taxes. The divorce of “pass through” and personal income rates will also make it even harder to reduce individual tax rates below 39.6%—ever.

They need to get their minds around the modern globalized economy. Nostalgia for economic growth through tax-cutting is all well and good but the same tax cuts today wouldn’t have the effects they did 35 years ago.

The benefits of any cut in the personal income tax will go overwhelmingly to “the rich” because that’s how the income tax is structured. They pay most; cuts mean they’ll get the most benefit. What will “the rich” do with the money? They may buy a few more Mercedes-Benzes, Audis, BMWs, or Maseratis, none of which are made here in the United States, or more French wine or single malt Scotch, neither of which are made here in the United States, and they may buy a few more expensive houses, something being discouraged by reforms in the mortgage interest deduction. What they’ll mostly do is buy financial instruments which do nothing do produce economic growth until and unless they’re sold and the money leaks into the real economy.

Don’t delude yourself into believing that giving more money to the less-than-rich will produce lots of domestic economic growth, either. The consumer goods that they buy are overwhelmingly produced somewhere else, mostly in China.

The reality is that the tax code is about tapped out as a way of producing economic growth and that more growth will require much more basic reforms. We need to produce more goods and services here in the United States and even that won’t produce the kind of economic growth we need for reasons you can probably figure out for yourself.

What do you think the odds are that Manafort’s attorney asks for the charges against his client to be dismissed on the grounds that Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel doesn’t meet the statutory requirements? In other words he challenges Mr. Mueller’s standing to file charges.

At Politico Democratic Party apparatchik Donna Brazile recounts the corruption, malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance she saw at the DNC:

On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.

“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”

“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”

Read the whole thing.

Perhaps I’m being unkind but there’s something about Ms. Brazile’s op-ed that reminds me of the media accounts I’ve read retelling stories of horrific sexual abuse and assault. Why didn’t she mention something while all of this was going on? Presumably, for the same reason the actresses didn’t: she didn’t want to hurt her career. What has changed?

Sexual harassment charges are being levied against figures other than show biz and media stars. They’ve spread to teh political world. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Fallout from the sexual harassment scandal at the Illinois Capitol continued Wednesday, as a state senator lost his leadership position and top Democrats scrambled to find a leader for the agency tasked with investigating such complaints after letting the job remain vacant for years.

Democratic Sen. Ira Silverstein of Chicago “will no longer serve” as Senate Democratic majority caucus chair, according to Senate President John Cullerton. The move came a day after Denise Rotheimer, an activist for victims of violent crime, told lawmakers at a public hearing that Silverstein made unwanted comments about her appearance, sent her hundreds of Facebook messages and placed midnight phone calls as she was working with him to pass legislation for nearly 18 months.

Silverstein has disputed the allegations and said he apologized “if I made her uncomfortable.” Losing his leadership spot will cost him an $20,649 annual stipend on top of the $67,836 base salary lawmakers get for what’s considered a part-time job. Reached by phone Wednesday evening, Silverstein said he was in the middle of grocery shopping at Mariano’s and would have to call back.

I could make all sorts of wisecracks but I’ll refrain other than to say that a) I’d think a victims’ rights activist is the last person you’d want to harass; b) Ira Silverstein represents the senatorial district in which I live; and c) $90K ain’t bad for a part-time sinecure. How hard is it to vote however Cullerton wants you to?

Also, lest you think that the Illinois legislature is only a do-nothing legislature in passing budgets, solving the state’s economic problems, there are any number of areas in which they also do nothing:

That announcement came as a Republican senator questioned why no one has acted on more than two dozen ethics complaints filed at the legislative inspector general’s office since 2015. Sen. Karen McConnaughay, who sits on the panel of lawmakers that oversees such complaints, also wanted to know why she was only just now learning that those unresolved complaints existed.

Democratic lawmakers cited two technical reasons. One is that there’s no legislative inspector general, so there’s no one with the power to turn complaints of any nature into an actual investigation. The other is that sexual harassment is not currently included as a specific violation of the state’s ethics act, meaning that the Legislative Ethics Commission can’t hold a hearing or issue punishments on such complaints.

The General Assembly has been without a permanent chief watchdog for more than three years. Three of the four legislative leaders have to agree on a nominee before the commission can consider installing the person in the role, said Democratic Sen. Terry Link, who is chairman of the legislative ethics panel.

Cullerton attempted to assign blame to himself on Wednesday. “It’s our duty to fill that post. I take responsibility for my role in that lapse, and I apologize for it,” he said in a statement.

But legislative leaders have failed to hire a permanent legislative inspector general since Tom Homer left at the end of June 2014. The following week, the Chicago Tribune published details of a secret report put together by Homer in the wake of a 2013 Metra scandal that offered new insight into how Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan navigated the intersection of public business and ward-style patronage through his Southwest Side office and Illinois Capitol suite.

Just sticking with what they’re good at.

Update

The editors of the Trib remark:

The current uproar reflects badly on Cullerton, whose reliance on protocol is no excuse: He referred Rotheimer’s complaint to an office that he knows full well is rudderless and ineffectual. “It is our understanding that there is an open investigation” — spoken Tuesday by a Cullerton spokesman — is a pretty hollow assurance.

This reflects badly, too, on Madigan, who sprang into action only after a groundswell of protest about a culture of creepiness in the Capitol. Madigan desperately wants to avoid looking like he hasn’t taken sexual harassment seriously. Too late.

which provides a little context for the complaints I’ve made about the Illinois legislature over the years.

The editors of the Chicago Sun-Times, in reference to the television spot I linked to yesterday, say this:

First, they suggest that Illinois’ problems can be chalked up to the Legislature’s refusal to politely sign off on Rauner’s supposedly pro-business, but certainly anti-union, agenda. In reality, much of what ails our state is a result of the political and governmental paralysis — for which Rauner and Madigan must share blame — that set in immediately after Rauner was elected more than two-and-a-half years ago.

Illinois, already hurting, quickly became a fiscal basket case, racking up more than $16 billion in unpaid bills, along with growing debt and pension obligations.

Second, the three governors overlook that Rauner, unlike themselves, must work with a Democratic Legislature. It’s a trickier business to govern effectively when you must bridge party differences. But plenty of Illinois governors, Democrats and Republicans, have found a way. Rauner has not.

I think the editors are the ones who don’t get it. It’s not an ad for Rauner. It’s an ad against the Illinois state legislature in general and Mike Madigan in particular. The message is that the only way for Illinois’s economy to grow is to elect enough Republican state legislators to force a leadership change.

I’m not sure of the merits or practicality of the argument but I think that’s the obvious message.