Tag: POLITICS

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

“Confront and Conceal” is a depressing examination of the American Presidency.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Confront and Conceal“

By: David Sanger

David Sanger (Author, American journalist for the New York Times, Harvard graduate. Co-winner of 3 Pulitzer Prizes.)

David Sanger offers a journalist eye view of the first four years of the Obama Administration in “Confront and Conceal”. The most impactful impression a reader gets of a U.S. presidential office is that it is a difficult and complex job. Sanger’s observations imply the best a voter can hope for in electing a President is that he/she is a good student of the politics of life and government. Sanger shows Obama has the skill of both while the President who follows only understands the first and cares nothing about the second. This is not to suggest Sanger shows Obama as a perfect President but that his skill in governing far exceeds his successor.

Obama eschewed American intervention in foreign governments but inherited American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the same time, the American economy was in free fall. A mortgage crisis was born from the greed of human nature. The cure for the mortgage crisis is initiated by the Bush administration. However, like many Presidents before, American foreign government intervention plagues Obama throughout his tenure.

The horrible consequence and resolution of the mortgage crises fell largely on the poor in America.

The rich generally escaped its devastating impact because they had the resources to cash out debts carrying rising interest rates. An estimated 861,664 families lost their homes to foreclosure. The lending institution’ managers who approved loans to the poor on false pretenses were largely forgiven for their greed. Obama’s administration succeeded in stabilizing the American economy, but the fairness of the process is grossly inequitable.

With the exception of the first Bush’s invasion of Iraq, American military intervention in foreign governments has been a failure in every circumstance since WWII.

One might argue this is less true in the case of Korea but the continued belligerence of North Korea and foreign relations conflicts with China and Russia are a direct result of past American military interventions. Obama attempts to improve relations with China but is unsuccessful. Sanger shows that lack of success is because of suspicion of America’s past history and because of a belief that Obama is simply trying to isolate China’s influence in the world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine speaks for itself. It will ultimately fail but at the consequence of many lost Russian and Ukrainian lives.

“Confront and Conceal” is no pean to the Obama administration. It is a revealing examination of a well-educated and prudent President who wishes to do what is best for America but is trapped by history and human nature.

Obama, like all 21st century Presidents, has the power to kill individual human beings by remote control and direct covert actions that can and do have unintended consequences. Obama is the first President to wheel the power of drone death to eliminate enemy combatants. Even though Obama martials western powers to participate in the overthrow of the Libyan government, Quaddaffi is not given a trial but murdered by rebel Libyan forces. Libya remains a failed government in search of stability. The idea of an incompetent and revengeful elected President of the United States with the power of drone murder is frightening.

“Confront and Conceal” is a depressing examination of the American Presidency because it shows a decent and intelligent President is only slightly better than an incompetent, dishonest, and poorly educated human being like Donald Trump. President Obama’s biggest contribution to America is in providing better health care for the poor but even that is being challenged by his successors.

UNITY IN SEPARATION?

Civil wars are a lesson to the world.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The New Naturals”, A Novel

By: Gabriel Bump

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Gabriel Bump (Author, MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, grew up in Chicago, Asst. Professor U of M.)

In “The New Naturals” Gabriel Bump shows why societal unity with racial separation is unlikely to be achieved. Without the power and influence of money, leadership is not enough. Bump’s story reminds one of Hamas in Palestine and their deluded belief that they can unify the Palestinian people by creating an underground movement to unify Palestine. Hamas fools themselves just as the leaders of “The New Naturals” show unity fails when the influence and power of money is lost. Of course, the two issues are different because Middle Eastern religion is an element of the fundamental difference between Palestine and Israel. However, money’s influence and power are a major contributor to the Middle East’s conflict.

Bump writes of a Black American movement. Like David Diop’s story, the truth is “At Night All Blood is Black”.

Bump writes of a Black American movement to create an independent society financed by a donor with great wealth. The donor finances the vision of two Black academics who choose a mountain in Massachusetts to create a literal underground community for Black American citizens. The dream of “The New Naturals” disappears when the financial backer quits her support of the movement. As the donor’s financing disappears, a “smash and grab” mentality infects the movement’s leadership. Loss of financing criminalizes the movement. What could not be achieved with the influence and power of money, led to “smash and grab” criminalization of the movement.

The vision of “The New Naturals” founders is a hope to educate and establish a group of like-minded Black Americans, independent of America’s white dominated culture.

Like the waste of money in building the Hamas’ tunnels in Palestine, these Black separatists choose to use their financial support for tunnels and rooms bored into a mountain. The Black movement is peopled with relatively well-educated Black families wishing for a better life. It devolves with its loss of funding into a group of thugs who insist on separation.

In America, the political choice has been made, i.e., regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity, all who have citizenship in America are Americans.

America has been one nation since 1776. American unity among its citizens is sorely challenged during America’s civil war but it remains the law of the land. Bump’s story explains why, despite continued American inequality, all who have citizenship are Americans. Equality in America is a work in progress. What informs our future is that American identity is a socially and legally enforceable fact.

As noted in 1954 by the U. S. Supreme Court in “Brown v. Board of Education”, the idea of “separate but equal” perpetuates injustice and inequality.

Palestine is considered the birthplace of Ancient Egypt, Israel and the Persian Empire. Though Palestine’s independence was not recognized until 1988, Israel only became a nation-state in 1948. Both societies have a long history as nationalist movements with their own beliefs. Israel and Palestine have earned a right to their own identity. The holocaust was a turning point for the right of a Jewish nation to be created. The current slaughter of innocents in Palestine may be the turning point for Palestine’s right to nationhood.

Civil wars are a lesson to the world. One hopes both Israel and Palestine come to an agreement to either create two nations or one; with unity as separated or as one unified nation-state.

WHO’S LAUGHING

Appelbaum infers no American President has found the magic formula for balancing the needs of its citizens with the concept of Adam Smith’s free enterprise.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society“

By: Binyamin Appelbaum

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

Binyamin Appelbaum (Author, winner of a George Polk Award and a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, lead writer on economics and business for The New York Times Editorial Board)

Binyamin Appelbaum has written an interesting summary of a difficult but immensely important subject. Economic policy and theory are boring, but they touch every aspect of life. Appelbaum shows economic policy magnifies or diminishes the welfare of every American, let alone every economy in the world.

Adam Smith’s foundational theory of economics.

Though only briefly mentioned by Appelbaum, American economic policy begins with Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish philosopher who wrote “The Wealth of Nations”. Smith advocated free trade and argued against parochial maximization of exports and imports that is manipulated by strict governmental regulation meant only to accumulate gold and silver.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946, CONSIDERED FOR NOBEL 3 TIMES FOR DIPLOMACY BUT NEVER AWARDED.)
MILTON FRIEDMAN (1912-2006, 1976 NOBEL PRIZE FOR ECOOMIC SCIENCES.)

Appelbaum illustrates how American policy violated the entrepreneurial freedom that Adam Smith advocated. In contrast to Smith, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) advocates government intervention whenever there is an economic downturn. Equally interventionist is Milton Freidman’s (1912-2006) belief that government should increase or decrease the money supply for national economic stability. The point seems to be that every economist thinks they have a magic bullet that will cure the ills of a faltering economy.

To be fair, Friedman did believe in free enterprise in regard to nation-state currencies. He argued for a floating currency rate that ultimately led to President Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard. However, the nature of human beings led to speculation and manipulation of nation-state’ currencies that exacerbated trade tariffs and defeated the policy’s free-enterprise objective.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT (32ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, INTHE DEPRESSION, BANKS FAILED, UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY SKYROCKEDTED.
GEORGE W. BUSH (43RD PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. 3 MILLION JOBS LOST IN THE 2001 RECESSION)

One concludes from “The Economists’ Hour…”, there is no magic solution for an economy in crises. Neither Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or any American President cured what ails an American economy that succumbs to economic crises. Adam Smith would argue an economic crisis is caused by a governments’ interference with free enterprise.

Applebaum explains how every 20th and 21st century President of the United States placed their faith in economists’ economic assessments of their day. All Presidents have found intervention by the government has unintended consequences.

President Nixon adopted Freidman’s monetary policy by imposing a freeze on prices and wages that squeezed the life out of the business economy and beggared the wage-earning public with job loss.

A decade of stagflation (high inflation and slow growth) followed Nixon’s administration. Stagflation is attacked by the Reagan administration with mixed results. A myth from economists like Arthur Laffer grew in 1974. Laffer believes taxation is either too high or too low for any benefit to society. Laffer argued zero tax and maximum taxation are equally harmful and produce economic stagnation and/or collapse.

ARTHUR LAFFER (American economist and author, served on President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board 1981-1989, Here illustrating the “Laffer Curve”.)

Laffer argued every government that reduces tax revenue decreases the stimulative effect of government spending. On the other hand, he suggested every tax cut increases income for taxpayers that will stimulate business and increase employment while encouraging higher production. He laughably created the “Laffer curve” to imply there is an optimum balance of tax reduction that would stimulate economic growth with proportionate increases in government revenue to provide for better government services. That balance has never been found. President Ronald Reagan experimented with Laffer’s idea, but it fails from unintended consequences. The principal consequence is to increase the gap between rich and poor.

BENEFIT OF TAX REDUCTION

Reagan accelerated a movement for government tax reduction that ultimately reduced income taxes from 70% to 28%. The result of government tax reduction during the Reagan years increased the U.S. budget deficit from $78.9 billion to $1.412 trillion. The benefit of that tax reduction went to the wealthy while school lunches were cut, subsidized housing declined by 8%, and poor families lost $64 a month in welfare payments. In 2023, the budget deficit stood at $1.70 trillion, an imbalance that shows why the “Laffer curve” is sardonically laughable.

President Reagan’s administration (1981-1989) was influenced by Laffer’s curve.

The joke is “There is no perfect balance on the curve because of the nature of human beings.”

Roosevelt, George W. Bush, and Obama choose to follow Keynesian policy. Roosevelt bloated government employment. All three increased the government deficit.

Some suggest the idea of
“Cost benefit analysis” (CBA) is recommended to the federal government by two law professors, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz during the George H. Bush administration but Reagan initiated it with an Executive Order in 1981.

Appelbaum notes that “cost benefit analysis” for government is first used during the administration of Ronald Reagan. However, Bill Clinton reifies its use with an Executive Order in 1993 that required covered agencies to do a CBA on “economically significant” government regulations. Ironically, Clinton was the first President in the post 19th century to balance the budget. Andrew Jackson manages to do it in his term between 1829 and 1837.

An irony of using “cost benefit analysis” is that it required a determination of of a human life’s value. Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and future Presidents use value per statistical life during their administrations. High-income earners were worth $10 million to $15 million, middle-income earners $1 million to $2 million, and low-income earners $100,00 to $200,000. Of course, these values were always litigable. The point is that CBA became a tool for government to regulate the costs of government policies, ranging from military expense to the health, safety, and welfare of American citizens.

The remainder of Appelbaum’s book reflects on the experience of America, Chile, and Taiwan in the 20th century. The implication of his review of economic policy is that those countries that align with the free enterprise beliefs of Adam Smith have made mistakes. However, America’s, Chile’s, and Taiwan’s economic policies seem to have had more economic success when following Smith’s beliefs.

No American President has found the magic formula for balancing the needs of its citizens with the concept of Adam Smith’s free enterprise.

Along with CBA, Appelbaum notes the ongoing controversy is about regulation by government when it tries to balance American health, education, and welfare with Adam Smith’s concept of free enterprise. Appelbaum infers no American President has found the magic formula for balancing the needs of its citizens with the concept of Adam Smith’s free enterprise.