In my earlier post this morning I wrote about the difficulty of compromise and the gulf between the Congress and the public on so many issues. Just for fun I thought I’d outline several key issues suggesting the Congressional consensus, the public consensus, and my own view of them. Think of these as being in a multi-column table. It would be a table too wide for this format.

Immigration

Congress

We need more immigrants.

The Public

The present level of immigration is about right or too high. The so-called “DREAM-ers” should be accommodated in some manner.

Me

We should adopt a points system like Canada’s or Australia’s. We should abandon family reunification and diversity visas. The number of work visas available to Mexicans should be greatly increased. We should have serious workplace enforcement of immigration law. We should adopt some merciful way of accommodating the “DREAM-ers”. Total net immigration should be reduced.

Taxes

Congress

There is no Congressional consensus. Democrats want to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest. Republicans want to cut taxes.

The Public

Corporations and the wealthiest don’t pay enough in taxes. Income taxes are too high (other than on the rich). We’re not getting value for the taxes paid.

Me

We should abolish the corporate income tax or at least bring the rate in line with those of other OECD countries, making up the difference in revenue by adding an additional bracket above the present top bracket.

Health Care

Congress

There is no Congressional consensus. Republicans want to repeal the PPACA but don’t have the votes to do it. Democrats want to expand the PPACA but don’t have the votes to do it.

The Public

Americans are very divided on the health care system. People like guaranteed issue. There is no great support for the PPACA but most don’t know why. They think that health care is too expensive.

Me

Americans are right that health care is too expensive. Believing that changing to a single-payer, particularly a federally-administered single-payer system, will pay for itself through savings in the cost of administration is poorly founded. The cost of health care in the United States is rising too fast for a single-payer system to be practical. No reform that doesn’t result in pay rates in the health care system going down is practical and there’s no practical way of accomplishing that. The PPACA was an error but it’s impossible to repeal. Medicare and Medicaid were errors, too. They’re also impossible to repeal.

Afghanistan

Congress

The Congressional consensus appears to be that we should win.

The Public

Americans think we should withdraw from Afghanistan.

Me

Invading Afghanistan was a mistake. Withdrawing from Afghanistan at this point would be a mistake, too. We should be prepared to remain in Afghanistan on an indefinite basis with very limited missions of counter-terrorism and force protection.

North Korea

Congress

There does not appear to be a Congressional consensus on North Korea.

The Public

Americans are very concerned about North Korea and want to increase sanctions.

Me

The only sanctions with any hope of bringing North Korea to heel would be sanctions on China and/or Chinese companies. Since we’re not going to do that, our best recourse is to do nothing other than prepare our military and the American people for the American response if North Korea attacks us, our interests, or our allies.

Arizona Sen. John McCain employs the pages of the Washington Post to promote an op-ed calling for a return to the procedures, style, and decorum of the Senate of a generation ago:

Most of us share Heather Heyer’s values, not the depravity of the man who took her life. We are the country that led the free world to victory over fascism and dispatched communism to the ash heap of history. We are the superpower that organized not an empire, but an international order of free, independent nations that has liberated more people from poverty and tyranny than anyone thought possible in the age of colonies and autocracies.

Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.

Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another. We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.

That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise. It seldom works smoothly or speedily. It was never expected to.

There are multiple different issues being presented here. First, is it really true that there is broad agreement among senators on values? I’m not so sure. Second, do the values shared among senators comport with public values? On that I’m almost positive they do not. Third, what would impel senators to abandon confrontation in favor of compromise? I see nothing other than a spirit of statesmanship that has been absent for decades.

Finally, what form would compromises take? Historically, there have been two different strategies for compromise. On form was compromise within legislation; the other was compromise on a package of bills. In the former strategy neither side got everything they wanted but met somewhere in the middle. In the latter on some pieces of legislation one side’s view would prevail; on another the other side’s. Frequently, these packages of bills included allowing senators to “bring home the bacon”—the abjured “earmarks”.

Again, from a historical standpoint past compromises were nearly always promoted by centrists who are no longer an active presence in the Senate. In today’s Congress the least progressive Democratic senator is more progressive than the most progressive Republican senator. The middle has disappeared and Democrats and Republicans have next to no basis other than personal self-interest on which to base compromise.

If none of what would be necessary to turn the Congress from what it is into an institution that serves the needs of the broad base of the American people seems very likely to you, then at least you and I are in broad agreement.

Who else could this be?

The way I see money at 52, my kids are adults basically, I dress like s—, I drive a four-year-old car, I have all the rubber monsters that I need.

but Guillermo del Toro as quoted in an article about him at Variety?

I have never myself felt the need for any rubber monsters but I guess that’s why he’s a great director.

Lest we forget, the U. S. isn’t the only place in the world affected by the weather. There have been enormous floods in India, too, as reported by CBS News:

MUMBAI, India — A five-story building collapsed in India’s financial capital of Mumbai, killing 12 people and injuring 14 others on Thursday, after torrential rains lashed the country’s west. Another 25 people are feared trapped in the debris.

Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried in the huge mound of mud, concrete slabs and twisted steel girders. The residential building is located in a congested lane of the Bhendi Bazaar area in southern Mumbai.

Thousands of Mumbai buildings that are more than 100 years old are at risk of collapse, their foundations weakened partly by some of the heaviest rainfall that the city has witnessed in more than 15 years.

There are places in India where rains in excess of 100 in. are not unheard of.

Update

The most recent reporting on Houston’s response to Hurricane Harvey can be found at its blog.

Yesterday

Here’s the most recent report on the situation in Houston I’ve found, from Houston’s KHOU:

• The death toll from Harvey continues to rise, including a baby girl who was swept away from her parents arms by floodwaters and a Houston police officer who got caught up in flooding while trying to report for duty.
• Shelters that can accommodate thousands are now open across the Houston area, including at NRG Center and Lakewood Church. That’s in addition to the George R. Brown Convention Center which once housed over 9,000 evacuees. Click here for a list of the shelters available near where you are.
• While the Houston area is beginning to dry out, our neighbors in east Texas and Louisiana are experiencing catastrophic flooding as Harvey makes yet another landfall there. The mayor of Port Arthur, Texas says his city is completely underwater, as is parts of Beaumont.
• Families near the Arkema Chemical plant in Crosby have been evacuated. The plant has lost power to refrigeration units that keep chemicals safe due to flooding. Authorities says the threat is not immediate, but could be catastrophic if there was a fire or other problem.
• The Houston Astros returned to the field Wednesday night for a “home” game relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida. Houston fell to the Texas Rangers 12-2 in a game players admitted was difficult to play because of their worries about what was happening at home.. The status of their weekend home series against the New York Mets is up in the air. It may also be played in Florida.

The disaster is still ongoing and our concerns, attention, and prayers should remain with the people of Houston. I encourage you to donate to the disaster relief organization of your choice to the degree you are able. Money, being fungible, is always best.

Renaud Girard, in an article originally published in Figaro (sadly, the French original is behind Figaro’s paywall) but republished at RealClearWorld, puts his finger on the problem that European countries have had in assimilating its Middle Eastern immigrants:

If you are a young Muslim and you feel ill-at-ease in the world of shopping malls, Disney World, reality television and fast-food chains, and you’re looking for an ideal, what options do you have? Communism? It has failed. Christianity? Most Europeans have abandoned it. What’s left, admittedly for those with little cultural knowledge, is the fantasized Islam of the first Caliphs. The young Muslim immigrant is led into thinking, as the Muslim Brotherhood proclaims, that “Islam is the solution.” The solution to all problems, his own and that of the society around him. Sharia law becomes the only possible way to rule over men. Society needs to return to the customs of our pious ancestors (the Salafs). The infernal machinery is in motion: A jihadist is a Salafist who’s decided to take his commitment to its logical conclusion. How else could you explain the hatred shown in Barcelona by the young Moroccan terrorists that Spain had generously taken in?

However, I think he’s wrong about the United States:

American society also lacks cohesion. It’s never been so divided. Young whites are in open rebellion against the cult of minorities and the globalized economy their academic and media establishments are trying to impose on them. They can no longer accept being despised for who they are and blamed for what their grandparents did. They form such a strong electoral base behind Donald Trump that nobody can seriously claim he can’t be reelected in 2020.

The United States has always lacked social cohesion in the manner of the European ethnic states. In France it was possible for an Algerian immigrant to become sort of French by using the French language and adopting French dress and manners. But he would never be “of French stock” (as they say) and would be subject to discrimination at all sorts of levels. Germany was even worse. Until recently it was quite difficult for its Turkish “guest workers” to be full participants in German society despite their grandfathers having been born in Germany. In European countries other than France there was an illusion of successful assimilation, the consequence of very small numbers.

Here in the United States our divisions are being re-emphasized by changes in transportation and communication and exploited by our political leaders. In many ways Americans have never been so united. We just disagree with our political leadership.

M. Girard is right about this:

The West’s great mistake in this new millennium has been to believe that no violence would result from allowing in so many different cultures, and in the whole world adopting the West’s political principles — the ones it claims are “universal.”

We have mistakenly believed that there are many more universal values than there actually are. We are also doubling down on our mistake by failing to recognize that the different ways that different societies have devised for organizing themselves are equivalent in how they recognize and promote those supposedly universal values.

Proposals for reform always make me wary. As I read JPMorgan-Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s op-ed at USA Today on tax reform, I immediately read it closely to determine what he meant be “reform”. In essence his version of tax reform would have three objectives:

• Simplify reporting
• Bring corporate income taxes into line with those of other OECD countries
• Increase and/or broaden the Earned Income Tax Credit

I’m not opposed to any of those things. When I read statements like this:

This isn’t about helping companies like JPMorgan Chase. Yes, tax reform will help American companies become more competitive, but the real reason to do it is to increase jobs and increase wages.

they make me wary, too. Whenever somebody in Jamie Dimon’s position says “it’s not about helping my company” it’s about helping his company.

One of my English professors once said something that’s stuck with me through the years. He said “I ignore anything that’s written in an undergraduate paper until the first ‘however'”. In Dylan Mathews’s post at Vox on a study that finds enormous economic benefits resulting from a universal basic income here’s the first however:

These are extremely contentious estimates, borne of controversial assumptions about the way the economy works and the effects that a basic income would have on it. Many, if not most, economic modelers would come to very different conclusions: that a basic income discourages work, that raising taxes to pay for it could have profound negative economic impacts, and that not paying for it and exploding the deficit is a recipe for fiscal and economic ruin.

which essentially negates the thrust of the post itself. BTW for those of you who are interested here are the assumptions made by the “study”:

Specifically, the Levy model assumes that the economy is not currently operating near potential output (Mason 2017) and makes two related microeconomic assumptions: (1) unconditional cash transfers do not reduce household labor supply; and (2) increasing government revenue by increasing taxes levied on households does not change household behavior. Other macroeconomic models would make different, likely less optimistic forecasts, because they would disagree with these assumptions

which I find problematic. You need to read the entire paper to figure it out but it also ignores several empirically-supported factors like the effect of debt on GDP growth and the price effects their plan would have. Additionally, it never says it outright but the plan is what’s referred to as an “add-on” plan, something which would presently not even make it to the floor of the Senate. No Republican would accept an “add-on” plan and no Democrat would accept a “carve-out” plan which is one of the many reasons that a UBI is politically impossible in the U. S. Eligibility is another.

Something leaped out at me in Gil Troy’s Time essay on the “alt-left”:

Although the label “alt-right” originated with “alt-rightists,” Hillary Clinton mainstreamed use of the term. In a sweeping attack a year ago, Clinton condemned Trump as representing the “paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment.” Introducing an unfamiliar term, she explained: “Alt-right is short for alternative right.” She failed to connect the growing familiarity with the word “alt” to the computer keyboard. She quoted the Wall Street Journal’s description of this “loosely organized movement, mostly online, that rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

Clinton’s analysis proves why “alt-left” is a useful term. The “alt-left” is also a “paranoid fringe… steeped in… resentment,” and some of the resentment is “racial,” although moral, in that it is resisting racism. It too is “loosely organized, mostly online,” wallowing as the alt-right does in Internet-fueled hysteria and harshness. It too rejects “mainstream” ideology, in this case, liberalism. And it is broader than Antifa, the violent anti-Fascist fringe that combats neo-Nazis and the KKK.

The emphasis is mine. The attitude being explored is an instrumental one. For a deontologist some things are inherently wrong. What renders something moral is its means as well as its ends.

Dr. Troy should either abandon his instrumental views or embrace them. A deontologist would see both racism and employing violence to achieve your goals as immoral. An instrumentalist on the other hand believes that the benignity of your motives renders your actions moral.