Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

As Australia literally burns due to climate change which its prime minister denies is real, the ever toxic Trump/Pence regime is pushing a new federal rule that would bar the consideration of climate change in planning infrastructure construction. The result would be to allow more polluting projects - e.g., pipelines for oil - and pretending that sea levels are not rising. It's true idiocy yet is mainstream Republican thinking (or lack of thinking) and does not bode well for America and the world if implemented. It is but one more reason why removing Trump from office by any means is crucial. Meanwhile, one can only hope that states will enact laws that will hinder the federal effort to destroy the environment.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this latest effort to harm Americans while enriching the fossil fuel industry and other corporate despoilers of the environment. Here are highlights: 

Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.

The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.

According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution.

The new rule would no longer require agencies to consider the “cumulative” consequences of new infrastructure. In recent years courts have interpreted that requirement as a mandate to study the effects of allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It also has meant understanding the impacts of rising sea levels and other results of climate change on a given project.

[T]he Trump administration has been aggressive in its efforts to roll back environmental regulations. The 50 or so pages of revisions that the Council on Environmental Quality is expected to make public on Wednesday would not amend the act itself. Rather, they would revise the rules that guide the implementation of the law.

Environmental activists and legal experts said the proposed changes would weaken critical safeguards for air, water and wildlife. The move, if it survives the expected court challenges, also could eliminate a powerful tool that climate change activists have used to stop or slow Mr. Trump’s encouragement of coal and oil development as part of its “energy dominance” policy.

In March, a federal judge found that the Obama administration did not adequately take into account the climate change impact of leasing public land for oil gas drilling in Wyoming, a ruling that also presented a threat to Mr. Trump’s plans for fossil fuel development.

One month later, another federal judge dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s plan to lift an Obama-era moratorium on coal mining on public lands when he found the administration did not adequately study the environmental effects of mining as required by law.

Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said eliminating the need to consider climate change would lead to more pipelines and other projects that worsen global emissions. It could also put roads, bridges and other infrastructure at greater risk, he said, because developers would not be required, for instance, to analyze whether sea-level rise threatened to eventually submerge a project.

“It has the potential to distort infrastructure planning by making it easier to ignore predictable futures that could severely degrade the projects,” Mr. Gerrard said.

Mr. Gerrard said the environmental review requirements of New York’s state-level version of the environmental policy act had helped to defeat a golf course that Mr. Trump hoped to build in Mount Kisco, N.Y. The Seven Springs golf course would have abutted Byram Lake, a reservoir for drinking water. Mr. Gerrard, who represented opponents of the project, said environmental reviews enabled the community to show that the drinking water supply could have been endangered. Mr. Trump shelved the project in 2004, but his public comments indicate the episode still rankles.

I am old enough that I will not live to see the worse consequences of the efforts of foul individuals like Trump.  My grandchildren will not be so lucky. 

France Calls for No Trade Deals with On Countries outside Paris Climate Accord

Since the end of World War II, America has been one, if not the only, preeminent super power in the world.  Much of this hegemony was accomplished and maintained through international alliances such as NATO and trade treaties.  Now, the Trump/Pence regime is shredding the template that has kept America strong and seeking to destroy mostly beneficial trade treaties.  Indeed, Trump and his sinister and apparently equally ignorant Vice President seemingly want to take America back to 1920's - 1930's style isolationism (which helped set the stage for WWII) even though the world and global trade has changed radically in the intervening almost 100 years.  The mindset is just as delusional as pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom who dream of the long gone British Empire.  Today, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested what may become a new reality as America slinks back into isolationism: a unified Europe, Mexico, Canada, South America and most of Asia all joining in trade agreements that would truly isolate America.  A piece in The Independent looks at the possible picture of the future.  Here are article highlights:

Emmanuel Macron has announced France will no longer accept “commercial agreements” with countries that do not “respect” the Paris Climate Accord during a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 

The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year. 

The US is now reportedly the only nation in the world which remains opposed to the Paris Agreement, after Mr Trump decided to pull out of the accord in 2017. 

Mr Macron also appeared to reject the US president’s “America First” policies, arguing that international superpowers should seek peaceful resolutions for global issues, from the Syrian Conflict to Iran’s nuclear programs. 

He also criticised the president’s decision to pull out of the Iran Nuclear deal, touting its success in preventing the country’s "nuclear military path”. 

“What will bring a real solution to the situation in Iran and what has already stabilised it? The law of the strongest? Pressure from only one side? No!“ he said. “We know that Iran was on a nuclear military path but what stopped it? The 2015 Vienna accord.” 

The speech deeply contrasted that of Mr Trump, who spoke on Monday about “America’s policy of principled realism,” while criticising components of the United Nations.

“We will not return to the Human Rights Council until real reform is enacted. We will also not provide any support to the International Criminal Court,“ he [Trump] said, adding that “the ICC has no authority. It violates all principles of justice and due process.”

“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty,” Mr Trump continued. “We reject the ideology of globalism. America is governed by Americans.“ 

[Trump] The president also announced the US would reduce its funding towards the UN peacekeeping budget to under 25 per cent. 

I'm sure that Trump supporters will sneer at France's position, but before they do so, they might want to reflect on the reality that France has a transportation/infrastructure far better than America's and a health care system that is the most efficient in the world which doesn't leave its citizens in bankruptcy when serious illness occurs.  

Trump's Infrastructure Scam

A post yesterday looked at Donald Trump's irresponsible budget proposal.  It also looked at Trump's infrastructure "plan" which amounts to little more than a scam and seeks to privatize much of the task, leaving taxpayers hostage to rapacious private interests.  Here in Hampton Roads Virginia, the Elizabeth Rivers Tunnels scam has demonstrated the greed with which such "public/private" projects enrich the private interests while screwing over the public.  In my view, after defending the nation from hostile outside forces, a main responsibility of government is to provide the roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, etc., that serve the interests of the public and which allow economic growth and prosperity for all, not just certain greed motivated private interests.  As for tolls, they are little more than a way for government to dodge its responsibility to fund and build much needed infrastructure through tax revenues and bind issues. A piece in Fortune looks ate the scam nature of Der Trumpenführer's infrastructure proposal.  An second piece in a column in the New York Times by a Nobel Prize winning economist similarly, calls out Trump's "plan" as a scam.  First, these highlights from Fortune:

Trump’s infrastructure plan hinges on a $100 billion matching grant program for states and cities to launch their own projects, with additional funds coming from a $50 billion rural investment program, along with a few other line items. That’s supposed to entice private companies to come out of the woodwork and rebuild America to the tune of $1.5 trillion.

Just like Mexico won’t pay for a border wall, private investors won’t pay for roads, bridges, and energy infrastructure just because the president says they will. Kicking federal obligations to private companies doesn’t work that way.

Private investors care about only one thing, and that’s maximizing profit. They won’t be drawn to projects that won’t make them enough money, no matter how badly needed the projects are.

And even for projects that do materialize, private investors’ need for profit means the costs of building new infrastructure are often passed along in the form of road tolls or other fees—sometimes, these can be exorbitant. This dispels the commonly held myth that privately financed projects are always a better deal for taxpayers. As another corporate giveaway, the plan would encourage putting major public infrastructure (like, say, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) up for sale, and would loosen environmental rules designed to protect local communities.

It came as part of a budget package that would also cut $48 billion in federal funding for other programs and services that won’t be matched by a paltry $20 billion per year in infrastructure investments. Among other things, the president once again called for the total elimination of the Community Development Block Grant program, and major cuts to Amtrak, Superfund environmental cleanups, and other programs. You better believe that Americans would suffer under this plan.

The piece in the Times is similarly harsh and calls out Trump's proposal as a con job.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump doesn’t give a dam. Or a bridge. Or a road. Or a sewer system. Or any of the other things we talk about when we talk about infrastructure.

But how can that be when he just announced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan? That’s easy: It’s not a plan, it’s a scam. The $1.5 trillion number is just made up; he’s only proposing federal spending of $200 billion, which is somehow supposed to magically induce a vastly bigger overall increase in infrastructure investment, mainly paid for either by state and local governments (which are not exactly rolling in cash, but whatever) or by the private sector.

And even the $200 billion is essentially fraudulent: The budget proposal announced the same day doesn’t just impose savage cuts on the poor, it includes sharp cuts for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and other agencies that would be crucially involved in any real infrastructure plan.

One section says that it would “authorize federal divestiture of assets that would be better managed by state, local or private entities.” Translation: We’re going to privatize whatever we can. It’s conceivable that this would be done only in cases where the private sector really would do better, and contracts would be handed out fairly, without a hint of cronyism. And if you believe that, I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy.

At one level, none of this should be a surprise. The current infrastructure nonplan looks a lot like the sketchy proposal the Trump campaign laid out in 2016, back when he was still pretending to be a different kind of Republican. 

Yet there is something puzzling about Trump’s failure to come up with a remotely plausible infrastructure plan.

First, the economics: America desperately needs to repair and upgrade its deteriorating roads, water systems, power grid and more. . . . massive infrastructure spending would have been an even better idea five years ago. But it’s still something that needs doing.

Where would the money come from? . . . . Despite a modest rise in interest rates, the federal government can still borrow very cheaply: The interest rate on inflation-protected long-term bonds . . . . So borrowing now to pay for essential infrastructure would still be good economics.

And as I said, there would be political advantages, too. If Trump just pushed ahead with a straightforward, conventional public investment plan, he could trumpet the number of workers employed on new projects.

[A]nd another point: Public spending can yield a lot of private profit. An infrastructure program involving real money could be very lucrative for Trump cronies, or for that matter Trump himself. Yes, there are rules that are supposed to prevent that kind of profiteering, but does anyone think those rules would be enforced under current management?

So why isn’t Trump proposing something real?

Part of the answer is that in practice Trump always defers to Republican orthodoxy, and the modern G.O.P. hates any program that might show people that government can work and help people.

But I also suspect that Trump is afraid to try anything substantive. To do public investment successfully, you need leadership and advice from experts. And this administration doesn’t do expertise, in any field. Not only do experts have a nasty habit of telling you things you don’t want to hear, their loyalty is suspect: You never know when their professional ethics might kick in.

So the Trump administration probably couldn’t put together a real infrastructure plan even if it wanted to. And that’s why it didn’t.

Trump's 2018 Nightmare Issues

For the last few months I have found myself starting the day by checking CNN to see whether or not Donald Trump has launched America into war - possibly even nuclear war.  It's as if I am reliving the 1960's where in school we did ridiculous "duck and cover" drills in the hallways and classrooms, except now the fear of a first launch lies with the White House. In short, Trump has brought a nightmarish element to daily life, and that's not even counting his war on LGBT Americans.  Thus, it gives me some pleasure to think of things that may cause Trump his own nightmares and aggravations in the coming year.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at five issues that could cause Trump headaches - hopefully, far worse - in 2018.  Here are article highlights:

The self-sabotage of the man [Trump] continues to astonish because it takes so many new and unexpected forms. Because Trump’s outbursts are unpredictable, so are many of his headaches. (For example, had he not impulsively fired James Comey from the F.B.I., he could have avoided a drawn-out investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.) But some of his headaches for 2018 can be predicted in advance. Here are five to expect:

1. Democrats will be less open to deal-making.  When Trump got into office, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats greeted him with a detailed infrastructure proposal, hoping to split Trump from Republicans and to get something passed on terms more favorable to them. Had Trump taken it up with a counterproposal and reached a compromise, he could have enjoyed praise for a bipartisan moment (one that wouldn’t have bothered his own base), played Santa Claus, and maybe even gotten a few miles of his border wall started. He likewise could have worked with both parties to fix Obamacare and called it “repeal and replace.” Republicans would have been no less eager to do tax reform later.

Now, however, Democrats will be less willing to negotiate. They see the midterm elections coming in November and anticipate winning back the House—possibly, despite long odds, even the Senate. So why not wait to cut a deal until they can get something better? . . . . a primary focus of Democrats this year will be on making Donald Trump and his allies look bad.

2. Robert Mueller sticks around.  According to The Washington Post, people close to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller say they expect Mueller to keep up his digging for another year.

If Mueller wants to get anywhere with making a case against Trump, therefore, he’ll need Democratic majorities in the House and, ideally, the Senate. As long as Mueller is eager to show something for his work, or if he’s filled with outrage over Trump, he has every incentive to move glacially in 2018. Congressional Democrats probably aren’t the only ones who are making calculations with the midterms in mind.

3. Someone has to blink on DACA.  In March, immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children start to lose the protections offered by DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which Barack Obama formalized by executive action in 2012. Between now and then, both Trump and the Democrats face a moment of brinksmanship, and each side is trying to figure out who has the upper hand.

Trump wants to legalize DACA recipients permanently in exchange for ending what is often called chain migration—meaning migration of not just spouses and kids but also of siblings, parents, cousins, and uncles—and the “diversity visa,” meaning citizenship by lottery for some 50,000 people. He also wants a border wall and further interior enforcement mechanisms such as “E-Verify” employment eligibility checks.

4. Paul Ryan wants to cut entitlements.  Cutting entitlements has long been an obsession among a sizeable faction of Republicans, and House Speaker Paul Ryan is a sincere believer in the cause. Does Trump want to do this? No. He did not run on it—quite the opposite. But Ryan very much wants to do it.

Ryan seems to be willing to stake everything getting his priorities accomplished, which is surely a reason why he’s signaling that 2018 will be his last year in office. . . . . Trump would probably love to swat away Paul Ryan, but the speaker of the House holds a lot of cards, and Ryan seems to play them better than people think.

5. Confrontation with Iran and North Korea will be . . . unnerving.  Nikki Haley seems to be leading a charge to ramp up conflict with Iran. She has the support of many hawks on this, including some in the White House.

North Korea claims it has become a nuclear power. Trump’s people claim not to believe it. If North Korea is allowed to keep arming up with nuclear weapons, then Japan and South Korea may follow suit. That would be dismaying, but killing millions trying to stop it would also be dismaying.

Those seem to be Trump’s choices on Iran and North Korea, and signs he’ll make the wise ones aren’t all that promising. But let’s pretend they are. For a new year, it’s a better note to start on.

Conservatives Are in Denial: America is No longer a Superpower

If one studies history, there is a long record of super powers that have held sway for periods of time before eventually going into decline - often because of over reach in their empires and financial exhaustion from never ending wars to maintain their influence.  The western Roman Empire is but one example - the eastern empire followed it 1000 years later - as is the former British empire upon which the sun once never set.  Some argue that America is no longer a super power even though it spends huge amounts on defense spending compared to other nations.  The middle class is in decline, life expectancy is not growing except for the wealth, our infrastructure is crumbing.  The list goes on.  A piece in Salon looks at the arguments as to why America is no longer a super power.  Here are excerpts:

Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats.

In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a “sole superpower” (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”

H.W.’s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be “to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity — given few nations in history — to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America’s peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years.”

For Bush, of course, “extending the peace” would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day.
The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”

Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What’s curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet’s first “hyperpower,” a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.’s miscalculation in Iraq
[M]ajor and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe.

How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?

The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act.  It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises . . . .

Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a viable strategy.  Sooner or later, the “balls” will simply go flying and the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.

For those who adhere to this outlook, it’s not America’s global stature that’s eroding, but its will — that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. . . . Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. 

In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle East.

However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking.

Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?

Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it’s not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers — none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers — Russia, China, and Iran among them — and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.

[W]hat this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.

But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower — and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it’s already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.

Why Obama’s New Budget Will Pressure Republicans

Today, Barack Obama will release his proposed budget.  A budget that the GOP obstructionists will say is "DOA" - dead on arrival.  In terms of actually being adopted, the GOP obstructionists may be right, but that doesn't mean the proposed budget won't have a strong political role that will live on.  If the GOP rejects the proposals, then - God forbid - the Congressional Republicans will have to submit a counter proposal that will show their hand to voters.  It's easy to just say "no," but fashioning something that can be passed and survive a veto threat is something all together different.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

When President Obama releases his budget Monday, the words “dead on arrival” will be widely incanted because they are part of a quasi-religious Beltway ritual.  This year, those words will be misleading.

No one expects Obama’s budget to be enacted as he proposes it. Republicans responded even to early outlines of his plan with a wall of opposition. But this time around is different because, paradoxically perhaps, the fact that Republicans control both the House and Senate makes Obama’s role more rather than less important.

Now, Obama’s plan will be the main public alternative to whatever the Republicans decide to do.

Moreover, the Republicans are responsible for passing a budget through two houses of Congress, so differences within the GOP that could be finessed in the past will have to be dealt with openly.

The most obvious will be on whether to continue cuts in the defense budget prescribed under the so-called sequester enacted in 2011. GOP defense advocates want to raise Pentagon spending substantially, libertarians want to keep both domestic and military spending low, and many mainstream conservatives will try to cut domestic spending even more to accommodate defense increases.

Obama has declined to offer premature concessions to the Republicans in his own proposal, which further clarifies the stakes. At the same time, he has made things trickier still for his opponents by putting many of his ideas in a form that Republicans have supported in the past. That’s true even of some of his tax proposals.

The president will call this bluff by putting $1.8 trillion in long-term deficit reduction on the table. But most of it will come on the revenue side. His argument here is straightforward: The bulk of the deficit reduction in the deals reached since 2011 has come from cuts in discretionary spending — that is, almost everything except the big retirement programs — which is now at its lowest level, as a share of gross domestic product, in decades. 

The deficit hawks who aren’t part of the ideological assault on the public sector know that the basic functions of government have already been cut too much and that some new domestic spending, particularly for infrastructure, is essential.

[T]he biggest challenge to Republicans may be whether they are willing to go along with Obama on ideas that are plainly in their wheelhouse. One small but significant hope: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have been pushing the idea that we need more evidence-based policy making, and Obama is joining their campaign.

Republicans have tried hard to tout their concern about income stagnation and an increasingly frozen class structure. Obama will be pushing for a new initiative, “The Upward Mobility Project,” to provide more flexibility to local officials in a set of government programs if they can show how their efforts will help people climb occupational and income ladders. Projects of this sort are exactly what we should be thinking about.

Obama’s opening bid ought to be the start of a back-to-basics debate — an argument that will extend into the 2016 campaign — over what we want government to do and how we propose to pay for it.

Economists Pan GOP Economic Agenda

With the spectacle of Kansas' economic meltdown under Sam Brownback and the Kansas GOP's imposition of a GOP dream agenda, one would think that Republicans at the national level might have taken pause to question their 30+ year old policies.  But that, of course, would require acceptance of objective reality and the resolve to stop prostituting oneself to oligarchs and those in the GOP base who are motivated by greed and hatred of others.  With the possibility that the GOP will seize control of the U.S. Senate next month, economists have reviewed GOP economic proposals and found them wanting.  A piece in the New York Times has coverage.  Here are excerpts:

Anticipating a takeover of Congress, Republicans have assembled an economic agenda that reflects their small-government, antiregulation philosophy, but also suggests internal divisions that could hinder a united front against President Obama — much as happened in the 1990s, when a Republican-led Congress confronted President Bill Clinton.

The proposals would mainly benefit energy industries, reduce taxes and regulations for businesses generally, and continue the attack on the Affordable Care Act. It is a mix that leaves many economists, including several conservatives, underwhelmed.

With the prospect of Republicans’ winning control of the Senate and maintaining control of the House in the midterm elections, interest is rising over what they would do to address what polls show is voters’ top concern: economic growth and jobs.

The [GOP] list includes measures to approve the Keystone XL pipeline; expand offshore oil drilling; block federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”; and open national forests to timber companies. Also making the cut were more parochial measures, like water projects in central Oregon and in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and rules allowing business owners to record phone calls or meetings with federal regulators.

Missing from both Republican lists are two pillars of Mr. Obama’s agenda that many economists consider important for expanding the labor force and promoting long-run growth.

 

One is significantly higher spending for infrastructure. The International Monetary Fund recently called for such spending, saying it would pay off in broader economic growth.

The other is an overhaul of immigration laws. Despite business pressure to provide a path to citizenship for the millions here illegally, and to admit more foreigners with skills, Republicans’ opposition has only hardened in this campaign.

While most economists and business executives do not look to Congress for much, they do want a rewriting of the corporate tax code and a revamping of fast-growing entitlement benefit programs, even as they ackowledge that is virtually unachievable.

They would be content if Republicans simply “do no harm,” as some put it, by avoiding self-imposed crises like the government shutdown last year that cost $24 billion and further across-the-board spending cuts that have been a drag on the economic recovery and kept pressure on the Federal Reserve to maintain its expansive monetary policy. Congressional Republicans, however, have said they are committed to continuing those spending cuts.

[W]hile the president is not popular, polls show that his economic proposals are, like a higher minimum wage, increased spending for infrastructure and higher taxes on the wealthy.

When Mr. Obama sent Congress his jobs package three years ago, several forecasting firms estimated that it could add up to 150,000 jobs a month in the first year. He challenged Republicans to propose alternatives that could be similarly assessed.

While private sector analysts say that the varied Boehner list is not suitable to their computer models, Joel Prakken, a founder of the St. Louis-based Macroeconomic Advisers, said, “I don’t think you would get a rush of hiring from passing these [GOP] bills.”

As for repealing the health law, “that would create a lot of economic uncertainty, and uncertainty is bad,” Mr. Prakken said.

Many of the bills would reduce federal regulation. Alan J. Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “You could certainly make an argument that relaxing all environmental regulations would increase employment, but there’s a reason we have environmental regulations.”

The GOP's latest Voodoo Economics

As election day gets closer in the 2014 midterm elections, here in Virginia - e.g., Ed Gillespie and Scott Rigell - and across the country one hears more and more GOP ads pushing economic policies that call for tax cuts that supposedly will boost the economy and help mall business.  The truth, however, is that it's not average Americans who will benefit from such cuts but, instead it will be the wealthy who further suck up more of the nation's wealth.  Meanwhile, the GO candidates are silent as to where funds will come from for public services or to maintain our crumbling infrastructure.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the latest brand of voodoo economics being hyped by the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

During his failed bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination George H. W. Bush famously described Ronald Reagan’s “supply side” doctrine — the claim that cutting taxes on high incomes would lead to spectacular economic growth, so that tax cuts would pay for themselves — as “voodoo economic policy.” Bush was right. Even the rapid recovery from the 1981-82 recession was driven by interest-rate cuts, not tax cuts. Still, for a time the voodoo faithful claimed vindication.

The 1990s, however, were bad news for voodoo. Conservatives confidently predicted economic disaster after Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike. What happened instead was a boom that surpassed the Reagan expansion in every dimension: G.D.P., jobs, wages and family incomes.

And while there was never any admission by the usual suspects that their god had failed, it’s noteworthy that the Bush II administration — never shy about selling its policies on false pretenses — didn’t try to justify its tax cuts with extravagant claims about their economic payoff. . . . .  And we should also note that the Bush-era Congressional Budget Office behaved well, sticking to its nonpartisan mandate.

But now it looks as if voodoo is making a comeback. At the state level, Republican governors — and Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, in particular — have been going all in on tax cuts despite troubled budgets, with confident assertions that growth will solve all problems. It’s not happening, and in Kansas a rebellion by moderates may deliver the state to Democrats. But the true believers show no sign of wavering.

Meanwhile, in Congress Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, is dropping broad hints that after the election he and his colleagues will do what the Bushies never did, try to push the budget office into adopting “dynamic scoring,” that is, assuming a big economic payoff from tax cuts.

Facts won’t stop the voodoo comeback, for two main reasons.

First, voodoo economics has dominated the conservative movement for so long that it has become an inward-looking cult, whose members know what they know and are impervious to contrary evidence.

Second, the nature of the budget debate means that Republican leaders need to believe in the ways of magic. For years people like Mr. Ryan have posed as champions of fiscal discipline even while advocating huge tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations. They have also called for savage cuts in aid to the poor, but these have never been big enough to offset the revenue loss. So how can they make things add up?

Well, for years they have relied on magic asterisks — claims that they will make up for lost revenue by closing loopholes and slashing spending, details to follow. But this dodge has been losing effectiveness as the years go by and the specifics keep not coming.

[I]f they take the Senate, they’ll be able to infuse voodoo into supposedly neutral analysis.

Would they actually do it? It would destroy the credibility of a very important institution, one that has served the country well. But have you seen any evidence that the modern conservative movement cares about such things?

Don't Drink the Water in Toledo

America's infrastructure is crumbling and now a major American city enters the third day where residents cannot drink the water.  The story makes America sound like some backward country in Africa.  It's yet another example of what happens when spending on infrastructure is slashed and need regulation delayed to satisfy the demands of the Tea Party extremists who dominate the GOP.  Huffington Post looks at the plight of folks in Toledo, Ohio.  Here are highlights:

A water ban entered its third day in northwest Ohio after tests showed some toxins still contaminating Lake Erie, leaving residents to continue scrambling for water for drinking, cooking and bathing.


Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins said early Monday that most of the tests done by state and federal authorities on Sunday showed a positive trend, but that additional testing is necessary.

He told WTOL-TV that he was concerned by some of the results and didn't want to take any chances.

The city council was to review the test results at its regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.


Ohio's fourth-largest city warned residents not to use city water early Saturday after tests at one treatment plant showed readings for microcystin above the standard for consumption, most likely from algae on the lake. The advisory affected more than 400,000 residents in northwestern Ohio and southwestern Michigan. Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency.

Worried residents told not to drink, brush their teeth or wash dishes with the water descended on truckloads of bottled water delivered from across the state. The Ohio National Guard was using water purification systems to produce drinkable water.  Water distribution centers are scheduled reopen at 8 a.m. Monday.

Some hospitals canceled elective surgeries and were sending surgical equipment that needed sterilized to facilities outside the water emergency, said Bryan Biggie, disaster coordinator for ProMedica hospitals in Toledo.

Drinking the water could cause vomiting, cramps and rashes. But no serious illnesses had been reported by late Sunday. Health officials advised children and those with weak immune systems to avoid showering or bathing in the water.


Amid the emergency, discussion began to center around how to stop the pollutants fouling the lake that supplies drinking water for 11 million people.


"People are finally waking up to the fact that this is not acceptable," Collins said.


The toxins that contaminated the region's drinking water supply didn't just suddenly appear.  Water plant operators along western Lake Erie have long been worried about this very scenario as a growing number of algae blooms have turned the water into a pea soup color in recent summers, leaving behind toxins that can sicken people and kill pets.


In fact, the problems on the shallowest of the five Great Lakes brought on by farm runoff and sludge from sewage treatment plants have been building for more than a decade.

Researchers largely blame the algae's resurgence on manure and chemical fertilizer from farms that wash into the lake along with sewage treatment plants. Leaky septic tanks and stormwater drains have contributed, too. Combined, they flush huge amounts of phosphorus into the lake.


Environmental groups and water researchers have been calling on Ohio and other states in the Great Lakes region to drastically reduce the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake. Ohio lawmakers this past spring took a step toward tackling the algae problem when they enacted a law requiring most farmers to undergo training before they use commercial fertilizers on their fields. But they have stopped short of mandating restrictions on farmers.

Conservative Groups Move To Kill Highway Trust Fund Bill

With America's highways crumbling and economic growth being stifled - here in Tidewater Virginia, the traffic gridlock restricts the growth of port operations - what are conservatives, i.e. Republicans trying to do?  Kill a bill that would replenish the depleted federal highway trust fund.  The effort is symptomatic of the wrongheaded, destructive agenda of far too many self-described conservatives who might be better described as extremists or economic saboteurs.  A piece in the Huffington Post looks at this batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The last likely opportunity for Congress to avoid completely draining the nation’s highway budget will present itself on Tuesday afternoon.

Though a Republican proposal to temporarily extend the Highway Trust Fund gained notable opposition Monday from two powerful conservative groups, leaders from both parties expressed optimism that the extension would pass. 

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill authored by Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) that would raise nearly $11 billion to extend highway funds roughly until May 2015.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have derided a short-term extension (preferring, instead, a multi-year plan), but their opposition has become more ceremonial with time. With a deadline fast approaching, the White House announced on Monday that it would support the Camp bill.

Aides in the administration and in the Senate told The Huffington Post that their objective now is to build the groundwork for passing a long-term highway funding bill during the lame-duck session following the November elections. They noted the need for a quick resolution (states will begin receiving smaller, staggered payments from the federal government for interstate highway projects starting in August) and the emerging bipartisan consensus around Camp’s bill -- endorsed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- as reasons to save the fight for later.

Despite the rarity of such high-level bipartisan agreement, the bill’s passage is not preordained. Its chances, in fact, took a hit on Monday afternoon, when two anti-spending groups not only came out in opposition, but also told Republicans they would score the vote. 

Club for Growth said it opposed the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014 and would include it on its congressional scorecard. Heritage Action for America did the same moments earlier.

The End of the American Century

Conservatives constantly bleat about "American exceptionalism" and bemoan the fact that the USA is less and less able to inflict its will on the rest of the world. What many of them ignore is the fact that their own failed policies and failed leaders have accelerated the downward slide of America's role in the world.  Some of the decline would have occurred no matter what as other countries in the world industrialized and modernized.  But failed policies explain much of America's lost standing.  In some ways it is remarkable that America never learned a thing from the decline of the British Empire which had previously enjoyed a century of world dominance. A piece in Salon looks at the end of the so-called American Century.  Here are some excerpts:

In 1914, the American Century began. This year the American Century ended. America’s foreign policy is in a state of collapse, America’s economy doesn’t work well, and American democracy is broken. The days when other countries looked to the U.S. as a successful model of foreign policy prudence, democratic capitalism and liberal democracy may be over. The American Century, 1914-2014. RIP.

A hundred years ago, World War I marked the emergence of the U.S. as the dominant world power. Already by the late nineteenth century, the U.S. had the world’s biggest economy. But it took the First World War to catalyze the emergence of the U.S. as the most important player in geopolitics. The U.S. tipped the balance against Imperial Germany, first by loans to its enemies after 1914 and then by entering the war directly in 1917.

Twice more in the twentieth century the U.S. intervened to prevent a hostile power from dominating Europe and the world, in World War II and the Cold War. Following the end of the Cold War, America’s bipartisan elite undertook the project of creating permanent American global hegemony.
This vision of a solitary American globocop policing the world on behalf of other great powers that voluntarily abandon militarism for trade has been shared by the Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama administrations. But by 2014 the post-Cold War grand strategy of the United States had collapsed.

China and Russia have rudely declined America’s offer to make them subservient military satellites, like Japan and Germany.  China has been building up its military, engaging in cyber-attacks on the U.S., and intimidating its neighbors, to promote the end of American military primacy in East Asia.

The U.S. still has by far the world’s most powerful and sophisticated military — but what good is it? Russia knows the U.S. won’t go to war over Ukraine. China knows the U.S. won’t go to war over this or that reef or island in the South China Sea. As Chairman Mao would have said, America is a paper tiger.

The U.S. military was able to destroy the autocratic governments of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — but all the foreign policy agencies of the U.S. have been unable to help create functioning states to replace them. Since 2003, Uncle Sam has learned that it is easier to kick over anthills than to build them.

In addition to having a huge military that for the most part can neither intimidate strong adversaries nor pacify weak ones, America has an economy that for decades has failed to deliver sustained growth that is widely shared.

Apart from a revival of oil and gas production in the U.S., the economy’s main area of comparative strength has been technological innovation.

The picture is even bleaker when we turn our gaze from Silicon Valley to the rest of the American economy. The manufacturing sector has been decimated by subsidized imports from China, Japan and other mercantilist countries, and by the decisions of many American multinationals to shut down American factories in order to exploit cheap labor and take government subsidies in other lands. America’s infrastructure is decrepit, but Congress cannot even agree about how to fund the aging interstate highway system, much less invest in twenty-first century transportation and communications systems. Most of the jobs being created in the U.S. are in the low-wage, non-union, no-benefit service sector where millions are trapped in the status of the “working poor.”

The U.S. remains a paragon of liberalism and democracy compared to many foreign dictatorships and anarchies, of course. But the proper comparison is with other advanced industrial democracies. By that test, current American democracy offers little for Americans to take pride in.

Personal freedom? These days, Europeans insist on far more protections for individual privacy against government surveillance or corporate exploitation of our data than we Americans have been.
Having been captured by the neo-Confederate White Right, the Republican Party in one state after another is trying to change voting laws to minimize voting by disproportionately black and Latino low-income voters. And politicians of both parties have to grovel and scrape before a small number of billionaires, in order to win in the “money primary” that weeds out politicians who can’t find some hedge fund manager or casino owner to bankroll them.
With two lost wars in a decade, a stalled economy choked by parasitic lobbies and a political system dominated by billionaires, you would think there would be a sense of crisis in America. But neither party is willing to acknowledge the severity of our problems, much less contemplate the radical structural changes that are necessary to address them.

Those on the right who denounce “crony capitalism” perversely tend to focus on government aid to a productive industry like the Export-Import Bank, while averting their gaze from the most egregious examples of economic parasitism — finance-industry predators and the predatory medical-industrial complex. For their part, neoconservatives are in complete denial about the limits to American power illustrated by the debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, earlier, Vietnam. (To be sure, we did defeat Grenada and Panama).

The U.S. is facing a triple crisis — a crisis of foreign policy, a crisis of economics and a crisis of democracy. The American republic has renewed and rebuilt itself during even greater crises in the past, and can do so again. But the first step is to drop the happy talk and chest-thumping and flag-waving and be honest with ourselves about the severity of the problems confronting us.

No More Liberal Apologies

Some of my former Republican colleagues - especially those who seem to have suffered a "Stepford Wife" like transformation and ceased thinking independently, preferring instead to imbibe gallons of "Kool-Aid" - claim that I have gone all mindless liberal.  I maintain that I haven't changed but that it is the GOP which has changed.  It's changed into something ugly, selfish, racist and anti-Christian despite its self prostitution to the Christofascist.  Much I my "liberalism" I would describe instead is a continuing grasp on common sense and a realization that the GOP's war on workers and other groups hated by the Christofascists and Tea Party is steadily destroying the lives of average Americans and creating a toxic business climate in the long run.  While I make no claim to have her savvy, Senator Elizabeth Warren makes some points that support my view.  Here are excerpts from a column in the Washington Post:

What all the descriptions miss is Warren’s most important contribution to the progressive cause. She is, above all, a lawyer who knows how to make arguments. From the time she first came to public attention, Warren has been challenging conservative presumptions embedded so deeply in our discourse that we barely notice them. Where others equivocate, she fights back with common sense.

Since the Reagan era, Democrats have been so determined to show how pro-market and pro-business they are that they’ve shied away from pointing out that markets could not exist without government, that the well-off depend on the state to keep their wealth secure and that participants in the economy rely on government to keep the marketplace on the level and to temper the business cycle’s gyrations.

Warren doesn’t back away from any of these facts.  . . . .  “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” she said. “Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” It was all part of “the underlying social contract,” she said, a phrase politicians don’t typically use. 

Warren’s book tells her personal story in a folksy way and documents her major public battles . . . But the book is most striking for the way in which her confident tone parallels Ronald Reagan’s upbeat proclamations on behalf of his own creed. Conservatives loved the Gipper for using straightforward and understandable arguments to make the case for less government. Warren turns the master’s method against the ideology he rhapsodized.
Would you rather fly an airplane without the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control? Would you rather swallow a pill without the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation without a military and fight our fires without our firefighters?”  How often are our anti-government warriors asked such basic questions?

But doesn’t being pro-government mean you’re anti-business? Well, no, Warren says, quite the opposite. “There’s nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can’t keep up,” she writes. “There’s nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There’s nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training.”

At the end of a long liberal era, Reagan electrified conservatives by telling them they didn’t have to apologize anymore for what they believed. Now, Warren insists, it’s the era of liberal apologies that’s over. 

The GOP’s ‘Jobs’ Hypocrisy

One of the main goals of this blog is to expose hypocrisy, particularly in the political realm and in the realm of religion.  Both areas provide plenty of topics for review.  And in the political realm, the Republican Party provides an endless stream of rank hypocrisy, including its claimed honoring of Christian values even as it pursues policies diametrically the opposite of the Gospel message.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the GOP's hypocrisy on job creation.  Here are some highlights:

I bring good news this new year! Conservatives have a jobs agenda, one that isn’t built around merely cutting taxes and regulations and getting the government out of the way so the free market can strut its stuff.

No—this includes… are you ready?… infrastructure investment, and a monetary policy less obsessed with keeping inflation under 2 percent. It’s new, it’s exhilarating, it’s brilliant! And it’s the same stuff that Barack Obama and most liberal Democrats have favored for years.

When David Frum, whom I respect a great deal, tweets that a new article should be thought of as “a ‘95 theses’ moment for the reformist right,” he gets my attention. So I clicked immediately and read through “A Jobs Agenda for the Right,” by Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, from the new issue of National Affairs. 

[R]reading it was far more infuriating than reading something by a conservative and disagreeing with every syllable, because articles like Strain’s refuse to acknowledge, let alone try to grapple with, the central and indisputable fact that the contemporary Republican Party—his presumed vehicle for all this pro-jobs reform—has opposed many of these initiatives tooth and nail.

The first big measure Strain touts in his essay is infrastructure. . . . There are people who’ve been trying to do just that. . . . . Their attempts to fund a modest infrastructure bank were supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But it could never get anywhere because of rock-solid GOP opposition. Does Strain not even know this? Or is he pretending it never existed so he doesn’t have to deal with the political reality of Republican obduracy?

From there, Strain turns to monetary policy, and this is even more comic. The Federal Reserve, he writes, should relax the 2 percent inflation target to get the unemployment numbers down. Uh, yes. It should. But it’s not as if Strain just originally thought of this. Liberals have been saying this ever since 2009, or 2008 even. And in response, conservatives have been saying that doing so will produce galloping inflation and destroy our economy. You’ve seen Ben Bernanke get badgered about inflation by Republicans from Paul Ryan on down for years.

As I said, I agree with Strain. I agree when he writes: “In short, conservatives should see that there is a role for macroeconomic stimulus in getting the labor market back on its feet” and that “monetary policy with its eye on enabling growth can make a big difference.” Yes, they should. Well… how are they going to see that? Does Strain have some special pixie dust?

It’s astonishing that he can write this way, but it’s what they all do on the right. They maintain the fiction that their party is a party of rational people who will listen to rational argument and isn’t simply dug into a state of psychotic opposition to anything Barack Obama wants to do. Everyone watching our politics for the last five years knows that if Obama is for it, the Republicans will oppose it.

[W]ith regard to jobs and wage stagnation and poverty and so on, the problem is that conservatives deny empirical reality. This gives us people like Paul Ryan, for example, who genuinely seems to believe, in the face of the mountains of evidence about how the social safety net and federal entitlements have saved millions from lives of far worse destitution, that all government can do is make slaves of people. That’s bad enough.

But now, we have conservatives who accept enough empirical reality to agree that public investment is not a crime against nature, but who deny the political reality that the Republican Party stands in the way of progress.

If conservative intellectuals keep pretending this isn’t a problem, there is no hope that it will change.

The GOP is Out to Destroy America

Yes, the caption of this post invites a reaction.  But, even as America faces pressing issues and problems, rather than pass new legislation to move the nation forward the Republican party is focused solely on obstruction, repealing needed legislation and sending the nation back into a reprise of the Gilded Age before unions had helped raise the condition of workers and regulatory reforms improved safety and health.  An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at the slash and burn efforts of the GOP and its crazed, unwashed base of Christofacists, white supremacists and those motivated first and foremost by greed notwithstanding the lip service given to "Christian values."  Here are column excerpts:

[W]hen you look at the actions of the Republican Party, particularly its members in Congress, my headline seems appropriate.

Three different pieces highlighted how the GOP is grinding just about every sector of the federal government to a halt. And it is doing it through a cynical combination of obstruction, saying no and failing to have viable alternative proposals worthy of national debate. Whatever political gains Republicans achieve in the short-term come at the long-term expense of the country. That’s simply unacceptable.

the GOP is “The Party of Zilch,” as Ron Fournier so accurately described.

Rather than be the party of solutions in a gridlocked capital, appealing to a leadership-starved public, the GOP is the party of obstruction, ensuring that its putrid approval ratings nose dive apace with Obama’s.

The country needs sensible immigration reform that brings 11 million or so undocumented residents out of the shadows. No, says the GOP.

The country needs to tame a massive debt that will be 100 percent of the gross domestic product by 2038 unless Congress raises revenue and trims entitlements. No, says the GOP.

The country needs fair debate and compromise around existential issues such as climate change, income inequality, and a deteriorating 20th century infrastructure. No, says the GOP.

“Other than hard partisans on the left and right, the majority of the public—moderate, fix-it Americans who simply want a sensible government—now have nowhere to turn, because the GOP is the party of nothing,” Fournier correctly concludes.

 

That congressional Republicans have no “governing vision or even a legislative agenda” was proven in a Politico story on Sunday. The headline said it all: “House GOP 2014 agenda starts with blank slate.”

Last Thursday, a group of House Republicans filed into Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Capitol office suite and received a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.”

The judicial branch is crippled as qualified nominees go unconfirmed due to “unfair hurdles in the Senate.” As a result, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second-highest court, has three vacancies on the 11-seat court that handles cases involving federal regulations and national security. Half of the legislative branch is in thrall to a band of right-wing zealots unmoved by facts as much as they are motivated by hatred of the president. As a result, the threat of government shutdowns and default is constant. Inaction on pressing issues is now routine. And the executive branch finds its agenda held hostage by an opposition that schemed against it since before its inauguration in 2009, even though said agenda was approved by the American people — twice.  

Ours is a government that requires two functioning parties that produce good public policy through the necessary friction of governing. Neither party is perfect nor has all the ideas or the answers. But no good comes from a party that gives up completely on governing.