One thing about Trump: he is decisive and implements things fast when he can. According to Politico, Trump’s administration has cancelled ads for the affordable care act. They’ve also stopped tweeting information and stopped sending people who visited but failed to enroll email reminders. The final day for enrollment is Jan 31 evidently the final week tends to have strong enrollment relative to other weeks.
See more at Trump White House abruptly halts Obamacare ads.
Update: I’m moving some political comments from a previous non-political post that said “open thread” here. This is for convenience.
Update: 11:30 Jan 27
January 22, 2017
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office is conducting a phone poll, hoping to hear overwhelming opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Here’s how you can participate:
Call (202) 225-0600…. (be patient until the recording starts) Press 2 to weigh in on the issue. You’ll hear a recording about the bill to repeal it, then Press 1 to support continuing the ACA. It takes less than 2 minutes!
I tried to call to confirm the description is right. I got a busy signal.
Glad to see that Mexican president cancelled meeting with Trump after Trump said that there shouldn’t be a meeting unless Mexico was prepared to pay for the wall. If the wall is worth doing or trying, (I think it is), the US should simply pay for it. It is so stupid for Trump to be needlessly provocative and attempt to get Mexico to pay for something it doesn’t want.
….
I would hope that it is possible for Trump to get beyond his juvenile instincts, but I am not real confident that it will occur. Maybe this incident and, undoubtedly several more to come, will wise him up.
JD
Fewer people to pull the rug from under.
Bernie Sanders says repealing Obamacare will kill 36,000 Americans a year. I think that assumes it won’t be replaced by Obamacare Lite, which would kill fewer people.
The GOP is like a dog that’s been chasing bobcat and finally caught up with it. Some might say chasing a skunk. Either way, the dog is in a risky situation.
Trump has also ordered no enforcement of the $100/day penalty for insurance companies selling policies that don’t follow all the ACA rules. That will allow people to tailor policies to what they need instead of being gold plated. That will probably have to be backed up by Congressional action, though.
Pre-existing conditions could be handled more like assigned risk auto insurance where there’s a national pool. Sanders is engaging in his usual hyperbolic style. That’s another unknowable statistic.
It’s a forecast. Maybe high, maybe low.
Repeal of Obamacare will mean much higher insurance costs for those who need it most, and lower insurance costs (and lower coverage) for those who don’t.
Without an immediate replacement plan, millions now covered may lose insurance. Who knows what would happen if repeal is passed but delayed while a replacement is developed.
JD, Trump in an interview last year said that having Mexico present a check would be humiliating to Mexico, and thus not the way to do things. He mentioned you can do tax on money transfers, or visas. Insisting that Mexico pay for it is just his response when Mexico says they won’t pay.
> higher insurance costs for those who need it most, and lower insurance costs
Yes. It also means that keeping the system as is means lots of people can just wait until they need the insurance.
Obamacare was the democrats pulling the rug out from under the American people. Fixing what the democrats broke is not pulling the rug out on anyone. And Bernie pulling a ridiculous number out of his nether regions is a pretty good example of why he is at heart just a rich boy pretending to be a caring socialist.
Obamacare is no bobcat. It’s more of con that’s finally run its course and is mercifully being stopped before it harms more people. That the con artists who imposed it are posing as well intentioned caring people is typical of busted cons.
Gosh Hunter.
I don’t see what substantial grounds you’ve got for thinking democrats as a group were acting maliciously or in bad faith or being con artists when they gave us Obamacare. I doubt that’s so. Personally, I think a large majority of those legislators thought they were doing something great for our country. [Edit: Two or more p]eople can disagree on policy without one of them being a villain I think.
Max_OK,
And who can often ill afford the cost of Obama care policies. For whom the Obamacare premiums can mean deferring or delaying important life choices– like marrying, having kids, buying a house and so on. It’s very disruptive to life to be forced to spend money things you cannot afford and don’t need at the crucial “setting up your life” stage of life. That is: your 20s.
It’s one thing to help out the truly needy older people. But massive transfers of wealth from 20-30 yearolds to the elderly are a terrible economic choice and stupendously unfair. (I realize the elderly like it. So do some approaching elderly. But it’s remains unfair.)
Well… let’s hope the Dems don’t decide to use blocking the replacement as their strategy to either prevent or slow repeal. Otherwise we’ll find out. Because the ACA is going to be repealed. Ideally, the replacement is designed and enacted either before repeal or quickly after. We are all justifiably worried about the havoc those wishing to block repeal and replace might wreak.
I sort of suspect not advertising is a Trump strategy to put pressure on Congress and especially the Dems to repeal and replace quickly. The way publicity works, if the clearly non-functional ACA is still in place, repeal and replace is being blocked by the DEMs they— the ones blocking repeal and replace– will likely be seen as owning the program that they refuse to allow replacement of and which is not working.
I doubt other Presidents would have done it this way– and I think it’s unexpected. But I also think it’s probably a perfectly legal thing for the President to do. Trump came from the private sector, knows the power of advertising, and he’s using the strategies he can. We’ll see what comes of it.
Marc Bofill,
I agree that the DEMS who supported Obamacare thought it was a good thing. But they just don’t understand many things including the injustice to working people who are being forced to “buy” something they don’t need and who in consequence need to make big life sacrifices– and all to transfer wealth to mostly older people.
Lucia,
Yes, I agree. I think that they either don’t understand or think somehow this doesn’t matter. Also, I think that they are generally warmer towards the concept of wealth redistribution in general than conservatives.
An aside, this is one of the reasons I’ve always found this cartoon so appropriate and objectionable. Is a socialist world a better world? [Edit: Rhetorical, I’m not really asking this question, I am summarizing the question I think the cartoon is about.] Whether or not the world being built is ‘better’ is a function of one’s ideology.
mark bofill,
Then if we are going to grant good intentions to the dems for the charlie foxtrot of a healthcare disaster they created, then why is it ok to attribute the worst motives to the Republicans for trying to fix it?
mark bofill,
The cartoon’s assumption is that all this can be done basically for free. The problem, of course, is that it isn’t free, it’s incredibly expensive. It’s not at all clear that the benefits even equal the costs and it completely ignores the opportunity cost. Only the climate obsessed think that climate change is the most important issue that needs to be addressed with limited resources.
hunter,
Because everybody knows that Republicans are minions of Satan. /sarc
Hunter,
It’s not OK.
DeWitt,
.
I don’t disagree with you, but I honestly think there’s more to it than just costs. I think it may be that there are fundamental differences in the vision of what sort of world we should be working towards. I think that even if costs weren’t an issue, there may be those who, for example, believe that nobody should be ‘super’ rich, or rich beyond a certain point. This is just an arbitrary example. Perhaps there are those who’s ideal world view involves a more austere life. Another somewhat arbitrary example – why is it a given that anyone cares about ‘sustainability’? Why is it a given that ‘sustainability’ is a value? (My answers – I think this is assumed, but I don’t think it’s really so.) Perhaps I don’t care if we won’t be able to do the same things the same way in +100 years. Perhaps I think that technology will provide a better alternative and therefore efforts towards ‘sustainability’ are a waste.
.
These are all just examples, not the substance I want to argue. I don’t want to argue whether or not people should be rich, or whether or not we should do ‘sustainable’ things right now. I mention these things only to illustrate my point that our vision of the future we should be working towards depends on our ideology.
Because everybody knows that Republicans are minions of Satan. /sarc
.
One problem of politics is the cult of personality.
.
But it occurs to me there’s also the cult of anti-personality. External demons unite a nation. The same seems to hold true for political parties. Nothing unites more than satan.
.
I am somewhat sympathetic to this, since I was pretty convinced that Obama had horns and a tail also. But after enough history, the really stupid things he said, e.g. “Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket”, never came to pass. Was he feckless? Disingenuous?. Then I came to appreciate that all presidents are feckless and disingenuous. The constitution and the nature of democracy guarantee it. The constitution limits the executive but the desires of the people make candidates promise things they know they can’t or won’t deliver. Trump has signed the usual flurry of executive orders, mostly meaningless, that everyone gets excited about. After a while, the compromises will begin. Not necessarily between parties, though that will also occur. More so the compromises with reality that everyone has to make, though some on all sides are quite proficient at denial.
.
The founding fathers knew that leaders would be venal. They also knew the voters would be venal. Makes me appreciate the constitution and ideas even more.
The Affordable Care Act is no different than any other large government program in how it was first enacted and then how its big government advocates attempt to kept it going despite its many obvious serious problems and that is:
1. Find a problem and sell it by first overstating the seriousness of the problem and then playing with the facts of the matter and particularly in what the program will fix and ignoring any unintended consequences that are likely to occur.
2. When the program is enacted and major problems arise attempt to ignore those problems as long as possible and keep talking about what the situation would have been without the program – no matter that this is a calculation that can never be made.
3. When problems become so evident and voter aware fend off all attempts to fix the problems by overstating what the fixers will change and the consequences.
4. When all else fails in constructing a “third rail” attempt to sell the idea that the only true fix is for the government to spend even larger amounts on the program and/or exert more control and to heck with deficits and debts and individual freedoms.
There is no GOP replacement plan. None. Trump has said that we will have “beautiful” healthcare. Implementing beautiful into policy guidelines is apparently irrelevant.
He has in the past praised single-payer. I doubt that’s got GOP backing. He has in the past talked about drug prices, but it was also the GOP that stopped competition in drug prices.
Of course no other country on earth has ever had national health insurance so we have no data to study or learn from. There are no metrics on whether a=our system currently or previously delivers quality care at a reasonable cost. We are in this alone. /sarc
Odd how if this were surface temperature data denizens would be dredging up every last decimal point from every obscure dataset to make a point, but suddenly with healthcare they are data averse. I suspect because they know every piece of data is pointing in a direction they philosophically do not want to go. Ignore the data. Pretend it doesn’t exist.
Color me amused.
.
One shouldn’t worry about problems of unsustainability because they tend not to sustain.
.
This plays into one of my themes with any environmental issue. Demographics will make environment moot. People imagine CO2 and AGW a problem at some time ( and some incorrectly imagine that time as the present ). The solutions, assuming that time ever occurs, are to reduce CO2. But population largely determines, not just CO2, but all other ilk of impact. Doesn’t it make sense that population is a better source of solution than changing just one aspect of environmental impact? Fortunately, population is already decelerating. Around 75% of all CO2 emissions are from countries with lower ( some much lower ) than replacement rate of fertility. Falling emissions are guaranteed from the countries which now emit most. It also appear quite likely that peak human population will occur before 2100.
.
This was not planned by governments or anyone else! It follows from the development of economies which makes children more expensive and of birth control which makes limiting children possible. Barring apocalypse ( in which case there are more serious issues to worry about ), these trends will not reverse. Instead of population explosion, we’re already seeing the problematic effects of population implosion ( see the economies of Europe and Asia, and to some extent, the limited growth in the US ). Ironically, this ties to your theme of sustainability. Economic growth is limited not by exhausted resources, but by limits on the numbers of consumers.
Kenneth,
Thomas Sowell wrote a couple of books about exactly that mechanism. The polemical version: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy is easier to read than the more academic: The Quest for Cosmic Justice.
The ‘fix’ for the advocates of failed programs is always doubling down. See, for example, the push by progressives like Elizabeth Warren to increase Social Security benefits.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158000)
January 27th, 2017 at 9:54 am
I am in essential agreement with you when you say that it is not so much the persons in power in the US that make a difference but the weaknesses of our democracies that become apparent under various leaders. Obama was a big government advocate of which there are many in both major parties and, given his advocacy, acted in very predictable ways. Unfortunately for us libertarians he had a good presence and was great at selling his big government products as opposed , we hope,to Trump and his Trumpsterings.
The founders attempted to use the constitution to fend off what some of them saw as tendencies of democratic governments to infringe on individual freedoms and grow in size and power. Unfortunately they did not foresee that the constitution was going to be changed in major ways by court rulings and precedents and not by amendments. Having the institution of slavery written into the constitution was the most negative contradiction of individual freedoms – even in retrospect.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158004)
January 27th, 2017 at 10:11 am
I again agree with you when you say that there are many factors that can go into the energy usage and resulting GHG emissions that are probably not considered by government planners and policy formulations because they do not know how to measure human innovations, adaptability or changes such as the reproduction rates. Just as in economics most models that deal with human behavior tend to be not dynamic but rather static and have to make lots of assumptions in order to be tractable.
I do, however, think that while reduction in population growth will have some affects on the growth of energy consumption there has been an historical correlation with standards of living and energy consumption and even with advanced nations having found ways of being more energy efficient. The developing nations are going to fall I would think on the correlation line of standard of living and energy consumption.
Worldwide economic growth in the developed nations has been very slow to recover from the 2007 recession and that has caused what might be a temporary decline in the rate of energy consumption. More and more one sees that leftwing economists are calling the lower growth rate a secular issue, which to me is another way of saying that given the current government policies of these nations which these leftwing economists see as something inevitable and unchanging there is a new reality of slow growth and thus slower increases in energy consumption and GHG emissions.
Mark
There are several issues with that cartoon which is supposedly at the “climate summit”.
1) It is not at all clear that the proposals to address climate change achieve the ‘good’ items on the bullet list. For example: It’s not remotely clear that cutting CO2 will result in “healthy children”. It also has very little to do with ‘clean water’ or “clean air”. In fact: lack of power to pump water to communities would result in “dirty water”; manufacture of solar panels could result in polluted water — as does inappropriate disposal of light bulbs containing mercury. At best the goals of “healthy children”, “clean water” and “clean air” and so on have nothing to do with climate action. At worst, some proposed steps would result in poorer health, less food, less clean water and so on. Many support steps to achieve these goals– but things like scrubbers on clean coal can keep air clean but are of no help with “climate” issues.
2) “Renewable” and “sustainablity”, what does it mean? The main truly “renewable” energy source is bio– so wood. You grow it, regrow it. But there is only so much land mass so that source is “limited”. The other ones discussed are generally “on going” (solar isn’t really “renewed”. It’s just available at a limited rate in Watts/meter^2). It’s sustainable to the extent that it’s limited— we can keep getting what we had last year– but eventually we run out of available square footage and we can’t grow. This is not “a better world”.
3) There is nothing specially about a “green” job that makes it somehow better than other types of jobs. And there is nothing to suggest that “green” jobs will somehow result in more or better paying jobs.
4) If you really want energy independence: Frakking, coal and nuclear are all suitable for the US. That’s not generally what people discussing “climate” want. (Though some are coming over to nuclear.) Yes, some countries don’t have access to abundant gas available by fracking or coal available– but we do. At least with respect to “energy independence” and “sustainability” all are either equally or more suitable than “wind mills”.
It’s all well and good to make the cartoon, but it really mostly shows how idiotic many arguments for climate policies are. And how those making them start from the premise that the things they are proposing achieve the goals on the bullet list while other policies either don’t — when in fact, lots of policies contrary to the needs of mitigating AGW would achieve the other goals more easily, more cheaply and better.
Those advocating policies for AGW would be better off admitting that they are primarily policies to mitigate AGW. They are not “jobs” programs or programs for “children’s health” and so on.
Kevin
Not today. That doesn’t mean they can’t develop one. The plan for Obamacare had to be developed before it was passed too.
Not sure why you think someone is data averse or who they are. You haven’t introduced any data in your comment. Inserting /sarc isn’t a databased argument. Presumably you know that.
Oh, hey wow. Kevin there more or less insulting us and I didn’t [even] see it.
Hi Kevin,
.
You got me all wrong. I haven’t been making arguments about the healthcare replacement because my mind hasn’t been on that. In fact, I don’t actually have any relevant data lying around, and I really don’t have the faintest idea which way that data would point if I did.
.
Hope this helps!
Mark–
He was moderated. I cleared it as soon as I saw it.
If Kevin thinks every single piece of data points in a direction he assumes people don’t want to go and he is actually aware of data that show they point in a direction he thinks they don’t want to go it might be more useful if he actually presented data and showed it pointed for or against something.
Instead, he just did an emotional rant criticizing others for being data averse. Perhaps he’ll come back and make more coherent claims, show us data and tell us what he thinks it tells us. At that point one could have a counter argument about… something.
As you have often observed, the issue is sometimes about values— and those can differ.
For example: I actually think young healthy people being able to set up their lives and pursue them with vigor, raising their children, gaining skills and doing other things is a very valuable thing. Excess wealth transfers away from them is therefor a bad thing.
And while I do sympathize that the elderly and infirm may wish to extend their lives, live into old ages and so on, I also recognize that… well… What can I say? There is a certain point where it is both unjust and unwise to impact the lives of the young and vigorous to help — for example– a person with Alzheimer’s get axis to ‘exceptional’ care. And I say this as a daughter who loved her father and a daughter-in-law who loved her mother in law. But really… I also have nieces and nephews who are not infinitely prosperous. There is a balance and it can’t be the case that it is always fair to burden those who are “lucky” enough to be young, healthy and so on with huge costs for the unlucky.
While some might say: But eventually those young will be old. Yes. And someday they too will die. As will everyone no matter how much care we shift. It’s not at all clear to me that everyone or even most people would chose to give up being able to afford a home of their own, marriage in the 20-30s, raising children and so on in order to have a system in place that will maintain their lives when they are old and have Alzheimers. (Both Popsie-Wopsie and Rosemary has “no resuscitation” orders. Neither wanted either their own or other people’s money spent to sustain them when life was no longer worth living. )
Lucia,
Can’t argue with that.
.
.
This is much more interesting. It seems to be an uncomfortable subject for some (many? don’t know) yet it’s a pretty basic and unavoidable consideration.
1. Nobody lives forever, we all of us die eventually, no matter what.
2. The costs of extending life and treating things that can be treated to extend life tend to increase the older a patient gets (I have no citation for this. I may be full of it. I don’t think I am, but I acknowledge that I just think this and don’t actually have substantiating evidence).
.
So: Where is the line. How much is it worth, to give a very elderly person another unit X of time? Assuming that we buy into the idea in the first place that it’s a good idea to take from the young and healthy and spend on the old and infirm, it’s an ugly question and a hard one for a society to answer – how much to take?
.
‘Fair’ doesn’t really come into it. There’s no ‘fair’ involved in the first place, in my view.
.
I don’t really have any profound insights, observations, or answers to this.
Good. For my part, I intend to clock out in a time and place of my choosing while I still have enough of my faculties, mobility, and capabilities to do so on my own. Certainly life is sweet and I’ve got no desire to miss out on a whole bunch of high quality life, yet. Death isn’t the worst thing in my opinion. And like it or not, sooner or later, we are all going to die no matter what.
.
Thanks Lucia.
“Both Popsie-Wopsie and Rosemary has “no resuscitation†orders.”
I’d urge everyone to spend a little quiet time and fill out the DNR form, living will, whatever. It’s not a fun task, filled with rather sobering and possibly morbid thoughts, but there are circumstances in which it’s impossible to do later.
Trump’s approval ratings are low, but this is inconsequential to how Presidents are remembered in the long run -which will not be known until 20-50 years from now. I think it was Barney Frank who said that history will look upon Bush kindly for the 2008 Paulson bailout plan, pushed through with the Democrats’ help. Likewise, I agree with Ross Douthat , that the universal coverage guarantee will be hard to unwind and Obama will get credit for it in the long run.
With regards to energy independence, I never really understood what that concept meant. Currently, the US consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day and imports half of it. Even if it reduced foreign dependence to 0, any worldwide change in oil price will still affect oil price to the same extent in the US.
mark bofill
Yep. Neither Rosemary, Jim Sr. or my Dad would have wanted money to come from the “grandchildren” generation to keep them alive when they were basically incurable. (Alzheimer/cancer/Alzheimer). In the case of the two Alzheimer, if asked when they were young, middle ages and all the way up to infirmity, their hope would be that once the reached the point where they really couldn’t remember their children, grandchildren or something that they die– of natural causes. Both were catholic, so not euthenasia– but that things worked out so they weren’t a burden on anyone– and that includes taxpayers.
Now, obviously withholding care isn’t something the state should be deciding on. But by the same token, forcing people with their views to pay while they are young to support a level of care they would never want for themselves and would prefer with-held and then supplying it because they are no longer competent to refuse it…. There is something unjust to both them in both their youth and their old age.
Clearly these three (and they aren’t the only ones) would have preferred to spend the money they were “forced” to spend on that health care in their youth on raising their kids, and later on sending their kids to college and so on. And they would have preferred to not have their grandkids have money taken to spend it. Yet, the way some health programs are created, this money is going to be spent on this thing. And often justified on the basis that in their youth they were too thoughtless to save for it. But reality is: Never at any point did they think this ought to be spent on at the expense of other more important to them things.
Tedious. You’d think someone could invent a search engine that would ….. oh wait. Google.
“The U.S. spent $8,233 on health per person in 2010. Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the next highest spenders, but in the same year, they all spent at least $3,000 less per person. The average spending on health care among the other 33 developed OECD countries was $3,268 per person.”
Yawn.
Hmmm…. I wonder what all these other OECD countries are doing that we’ve never thought of …..
RB,
For a lot of people who believe that a negative balance of trade is always and in every way a bad thing, our current President, for example, energy independence is always and in every way a good thing. But you are correct, oil is fungible. If you believe that per capita GDP is the only true measure of standard of living, a drop in oil prices would increase GDP for an oil importing country and decrease GDP for an energy independent or oil exporting country.
DeWitt,
The recent drop in oil prices for the US has meant an increase in consumer spending but offset by a drop in oil sector investment, so, the net impact on GDP has been zero .
Kevin,
I’ll second lucia. Make a quantitative argument with sources for your data and we can discuss it. A rant just doesn’t cut it.
RB,
I don’t care who “gets credit”. There are bugs that need fixing in Obamacare. Those are things Obama and the Dems considered “features” not “bugs”. If they get fixed, they get fixed. To the extent that some other features are retained– to the extent they are good and popular: great.
DeWitt Payne – your “Make a quantitative argument with sources for your data and we can discuss it. A rant just doesn’t cut it.” is pretty much LOL material considering your data-free posts in this thread so far. Perhaps you should follow your own advice.
Data on this subject is very easy to find. I really didn’t think y’all were a bunch of know-nothings or allergic to Google. Every healthcare study finds the US spends disproportionately more money than the rest of the developed world for healthcare with results that are typically worse than average.
My comment originally was that for a site that likes to deal in data I see nothing. I still see nothing. I actually have no interest in playing this game and with comments always going into moderation even less so. Keep to your echo chamber. Nothing to see here.
Lucia,
I agree there are bugs that need fixing. However, whether you consider some of those things a Democratic or Republican feature depends on how far back you go in time – such as the individual mandate
I get a kick out of hearing people reflect on how history will regard current people and particularly politicians. It is usually in order to make a partisan point favorable to a current partisan favorite. In the long run it will matter little to those who avoid taking a given historians view on the past and particularly when that view might be colored by their own political preferences.
Why would being the father of universal healthcare, vis a vis the government, necessarily be a shining accomplishment unless one prejudged that to be a good thing. In an enlightened future it might be considered a bad thing and that in turn might well change how a future historian, depending on his politics, will credit it.
RB (Comment #158028)
January 27th, 2017 at 2:14 pm
What difference does it make, knowing the problems with ACA, what the parties once thought. Maybe this is a rare occurrence of politicians admitting a mistake – in an indirect way
RB,
I am aware of the history of the individual mandate. However, as a matter of actually introducing it into a law and passing it: that was the Democrats. It’s a DEM feature.
That a conservative leaning think tank floated the idea at one time is utterly irrelevant. That fact that a few GOP members liked it a but but never enough of them to get it into any program or law and that they objected to it when it was actually proposed to become law means it’s not a GOP feature. No matter how much “history” you have showing someone who ran for president and lost might have liked it.
Lots of ideas get floated. And thought about and discussed. And in the process of discussion, some people might like it a bit– and then hear a flas and change their mind.
Unless an idea are adopted by the GOP as a whole in some serious way they are not GOP ideas. Same with DEM ideas: it’s not a DEM idea just because a few DEMs liked it but not enough to work toward implementing it.
In this case: individual mandate was adopted by the DEMS as a whole and it was DEMS implemented– with no bilateral support when they did so. So the individual mandate is theirs and is so even if some of them want to blame someone else now that they realize they shoved a turd into Obamacare.
Lucia,
I agree the Dems own it now. Whether there is a better fix, we will have to see. Providing pre-existing coverage essentially leads to imposing a penalty on those who want to join only when they need serious care. But we will have to see what other alternatives exist.
Kenneth,
I agree that we are all hallucinating based on our past experiences.
I had a nasty fall 2 days ago, which provided some insight into the way that the health system currently works. In the dark, I walked into the wrong door and tumbled 12 feet down basement stairs and whacked my head on concrete. After the fall, I was bleeding profusely, but amazingly wasn’t in much pain, and it turns out other than a 2 inch gash in the back of the head that needed staples, I was unhurt.
….
In any event, I called 911 and was taken to the emergency room. It was busy, and about 1.5 hours after I arrived, I was being taken to imaging for CT scans of my head and neck. This was before I was seen by a doctor. When I found that I was going to be scanned on my neck, I told the attendant that I preferred not to have a neck CT scan, and she wheeled me back to my room, and I waited for the doctor who came to see me about 3 hours into my stay. I had no pain in my neck or hands and had a full range of motion in my neck and arms.
…
The neck came up very briefly when the doctor came to see me after a quick one minute examination. (I was OK with the short examination because other than the bleeding, I was fine) He had been informed that I didn’t prefer a neck CT scan ahead of time, and said: “You will allow us to do a skull CT scan but not a neck CT scan, right?” I said yes. If he had spent some time with me and given me a reason for a neck CT scan (which I am assuming would cost me another $2,000 or $3,000 [because of my high deductible]), I would have listened. However, if I was going to be given an expensive test for no apparent reason to me, I didn’t want it. (The skull CT scan showed no problems)
…
The point of my vignette here is that American health care is very poorly structured to control costs. If medical providers see insurance and a procedure that can be justified as a matter of routine, they will do it without checking as to whether it is needed in any particular instance. From my point of view, the hospital was, from a financial viewpoint, looking at me as an ATM machine.
JD
RB
“Penalty” is an interesting choice of words. I don’t even consider people having to pay for their care if they chose not to buy insurance a “penalty”. If you refuse to buy insurance, that should mean you are self-insuring. In other words: you pay if something happens to you and don’t otherwise.
This is not a “penalty”. A penalty would be that we require them to pay an additional amount above and beyond what they use because they didn’t buy insurance. I haven’t seen any proposals that suggest that sort of penalty.
I have seen a penalty for not buying insurance one doesn’t want. That’s the fine under the individual mandate. It’s actually really truly a penalty.
The GOP never owned it. What you have is a few GOP members who toyed with it without ever persuading the GOP as a collective. If one or two members toying with an idea makes the whole party “own it” the idea of a party owning it means nothing. The GOP never owned that idea.
JD Ohio
Worse, under a circumstance when you are least likely to be sufficiently composed to make an informed choice.
RB regarding foreign oil- http://dilbert.com/strip/2006-02-19
Mark Bofill, when ObamaCare passed there were a few liberals who were being honest that said they expected things to get worse for people, and it would create pressure for single-payer.
Obama had a long term plan along the same lines, but saw it as steadily forcing more and more people onto the exchanges.
Lucia,
Not sure if you are saying that if someone is self-insuring, they are so for life. Because one could pay out of pocket for part of the year in which something serious came up and then sign up during the next open enrollment.
That the sickest were signing up resulting in cost increases is already the case .
RB
They are self insuring for problems that arise before they buy insurance especially those problems that are detected prior to buying the insurance.
Consider house or car insurance. Suppose I have no car insurance, and I hit someone. I’m liable for that. If there is a judgement against me, I pay.
Now, suppose I go out and buy insurance the day after the accident. The car company doesn’t pay for the past accident. That wouldn’t be “insurance”. I remain self-insuring for what happened before I took out my policy.
Sure. But the system could require you to continue to pay for medical care associated problems that arose and were detected before you took out the policy. So for example: you knew you need insulin. So you continue to pay for that. Meanwhile, your policy will cover things like cancer, getting hit by a buss and so on.
The gap in coverage for the insulin would not be a penalty. You were self insuring for problems; one came up. You now cover yourself on that. This is not a “penalty”.
Of course. Because the system was penalizing people who bought when they weren’t sick by making them pay for those who really wanted a “medical plan” which they had the option of subscribe to only after the plan was sure to pay out more than they paid in. So those people who bought when they weren’t sick overpaid to cover those who were sick. So they didn’t buy. Nothing surprising here.
Had the system made sure those who elected to self-insure for detected problems paid for those already detected, then the healthy wouldn’t have had to cover those free riders who just jumped in when their knowable anticipated benefits in year XXXd exceeded the anticipated premiums in year XXXd.
So for example: as far as I can see, if a person went along without insurnace in year XXXa- XXXc and developed diabetes and now know they need to cover the costs of diabetes in XXXd. Well: the diabetes issue cam up while they were self insuraced and so those costs should come out of their insurer at the time they occurred– and that insurere was themselves. So should have to pay for their costs for diabetes in XXXd.
But there’s no reason they should be denied the ability to buy a policy that covers cancer, getting hit buy a bus, an apendectomy and so on. They should be free to do that that during open enrollment with a provision excluding the known condition for some amount of time. That rider could vanish after a year or two.
In the meantime, the people who bought insurance are insured for unexpected expenses — so they are no longer self insured because their police covers these unexpected events. They still cover the cost of problems that arose while they were fully self-insured. That’s the way car insurance and housing insurance works.
JD: “the hospital was, from a financial viewpoint, looking at me as an ATM machine.”
I agree. I had a similar experience a while ago, following an auto accident. The car suffered much more than I did — aside from a bruise I was unhurt. But the police/EMTs pretty much insisted that I go to the ER. Possibly a wise precaution; more likely the police were trying to find out if I had been driving in an impaired state (I was not). EMTs put on a neck brace despite no apparent injury there. ER hooked me up to cardiac monitor, did an X-ray, etc. Took hours. They’d have kept me overnight, too, if I hadn’t objected strenuously — I was really tired of wasting my time there. Pretty big bill in the end for all those services, when I would have been happy calling a friend to drive me home.
As you say, the practitioners are not sensitive to cost at all — it was never mentioned to me how much this was going to cost me, and (in retrospect) I was not aggressive enough in trying to control what they were doing. They wanted to do anything plausible. Not necessarily attempting to maximize income, but likely operating defensively, trying to avoid a situation in which a lawyer could later say, “Didn’t the circumstances suggest that the patient might have suffered X? Why didn’t you run diagnostic procedure Y which would test for X?”
There wasn’t any attempt to discuss. (Until it came down to an overnight admission.) What I’d like to have heard is, “We’d like to run the following tests, for the following purposes. Estimated cost of procedure A is such-and-such. If you refuse procedure A, we can’t be held responsible if you have condition B.” And so on down the list. One has this sort of discussion all the time with (e.g.) auto mechanics, landscapers, repairers, etc. Mutual consent after being informed. I understand that in a true emergency situation, such a conversation may not be practical, but this wasn’t such a case. Current medical care procedure tends to skip any such discussion, giving more-or-less carte blanche to the MD, who has no incentive to keep to a minimal list, and every incentive to include tests of marginal value.
I think this is a major reason for skyrocketing medical costs, independent of ACA. The doctors have, if anything, an incentive to over-prescribe, while the patient tends to get pulled along and with insurance has no (or little) “skin in the game”. As a result, a lot of marginal-utility (at best) procedures get done. Such as your neck X-ray when you hadn’t hurt your neck. Lucia has also alluded to excessive end-of-life care.
I care about costs.
.
The hocus pocus to get ObamaCare revenue neutral was quite a feat. Doc fix was fraud. I wonder how the savings from waste, fraud, and abuse is going? Never seen an update to that one.
.
Everyone likes subsidized healthcare for themselves, but somebody needs to be doing the subsidizing. Perhaps Mexico?
.
Realistically the uninsured can’t be allowed to work the system like they can now, waiting until they get sick. Universal bare bones coverage with high annual deductibles under the Medicare system, pay as you go. The allowed services will be sparse. The IRS mercilessly collects debt like it does child support.
.
Medicare for all is the only thing that seems doable and the system already exists, and since all waste fraud, and abuse has been removed by the ACA it is totally efficient.
.
In summary, National Crappy Care ™. We can make it better as time goes along, but starting at the bottom is a good idea.
MikeN,
Well, alright. Say for the sake of argument that that’s absolutely so. Still, I don’t think these few honest liberals were motivated by malice, or that they were playing confidence games. I think these people honestly thought / think single payer is the ‘best’ thing for the country – that that’s the correct direction to go. It’s a policy disagreement with my position, but it doesn’t mean they are con men or evil villains or anything of that nature in my eyes. Anyway, I think this horse has finished it’s terminal flogging. 🙂
.
Thanks MikeN.
Tom Scharf: “Doc fix was fraud”
How do you mean that? how about more detail?
Fraud reduction is a relatively minor part of the claimed ACA savings. See this report.
Re: Non-Citizen Voting: Was amazed to see a study done by an apparently apolitical professor that concludes that approximately 800,000 non-citizens probably voted in 2008 presidential election and that approximately the same percentage would be expected to have voted in the 2016 election. (The math as to the actual number of non-citizen voters isn’t completely clear, but it is clear that there more than 500,000 non-citizen voters, and the exact numbers of the study conclusion don’t matter to me.) See https://www.wired.com/2017/01/author-trumps-favorite-voter-fraud-study-says-everyones-wrong/
….
The Left is always saying there is no voter fraud. This professor finds very substantial voter fraud. (Of course, Trump is misconstruing the numbers to claim that non-citizen voters provided Clinton’s margin of victory in the popular vote.) This should have been a big story during the campaign, but as far as I can see it was given very little play.
JD
Lucia: Well… let’s hope the Dems don’t decide to use blocking the replacement as their strategy to either prevent or slow repeal.
_____
Hopefully, the GOP can come up with a plan the Dems can accept rather than “take it or leave it.” If not, I wouldn’t blame the Dems for digging their heals in.
Max_OK,
I seem to recall that the ACA was passed that way. Why apply a different standard to its repeal?
Max_OK
You mean you hope the GOP don’t do what the Dems did when creating Obamacare in the first place.
Yes. I hope they invite the Dems to work on the bill together. That would be more likely to result in a program that both sides find something to like about.
Perhaps not. But even if they do, I think they won’t win. They certainly won’t win “repeal”. But the might be able to block “replace” which would leave us in an odd position.
This is interesting
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/01/review-this.php?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=sw&utm_campaign=sw
This might be talked about tomorrow, over the weekend and if used for some time.
JD Ohio and HaroldW,
One of my hobbies is being a course marshal at amateur and professional road races. As a result, I’ve seen a lot high speed accidents. We are taught as first responders that one should always assume a C-Spine injury until proven otherwise. That means if the driver cannot get out of the car under his own power, the EMT’s do a full extraction with vest and collar to immobilize the neck and spine and may put the driver on a backboard for transport to track medical for evaluation. The same goes for the driver’s helmet. If he can’t take it off by himself, it stays on. I might help unfasten the chin strap.
In one incident I know about because I know the driver and was at the event but not on the corner where it happened, he was extracted carefully from the car, transported to a hospital for x-rays and released. The next morning, he could barely get out of bed. He went back to the hospital where they took more x-rays and discovered that his C-4 vertebra was shattered. The operation to fix it was completely successful and he’s driving again (some people don’t take a hint). The comment from the doctor was that he had never seen someone walk into a hospital with that injury and they rarely walked out.
The swelling from the injury had apparently held the bone fragments together well enough that it didn’t show up on the initial x-ray. Maybe it would have been seen by MRI, dunno. It wasn’t available at the time. IOW, you may think you weren’t injured, but you could be wrong and the consequences could be severe. If you’re willing to take that risk, fine. But the doctor and the hospital should have made you sign a release to that effect so it’s much more difficult to sue them for negligence.
RB (Comment #158032)
January 27th, 2017 at 2:37 pm
RB, your reply posts with contents from an apparent minimalist approach and then the ever present link reminds me that I do not converse well with links. Worse when the link appears detached from the subject under discussion it would be like attempting a conversation with a crazy person.
Dewitt Payne: ” one incident I know about because I know the driver and was at the event but not on the corner where it happened, he was extracted carefully from the car, transported to a hospital for x-rays and released.”
….
These facts are totally different from mine. I was able to walk and move my arms and legs with no problem from the moment after the injury. Had no bruises or swelling in my neck and zero pain. Could swivel my head on my neck with zero problems. Could move my hands and arm with no problems. A minor bruise on my left hip. Only issue that affected me was the bleeding — was afraid I would pass out from excessive bleeding. Was also afraid that I might have bleeding in my brain, which was why I wanted the head CT scan.
….
“you may think you weren’t injured, but you could be wrong and the consequences could be severe. If you’re willing to take that risk, fine. But the doctor and the hospital should have made you sign a release to that effect so it’s much more difficult to sue them for negligence.”
….
I would have had zero problems signing a release. The fact that the doctor made absolutely no effort to convince me to have a neck CT scan is an indication to me that he didn’t think I needed it. As I said, I was happy to listen to a reason for a neck CT scan, but was not given any reason whatsoever for one. I inferred originally that since I hit my head, they were seeking the neck CT as a matter of routine.
….
Would also add that there appeared to be other minor tests that were done that were unnecessary, but since I thought that they were not that expensive I didn’t object. I was given blood tests for no reason that was explained to me. Was also told by the nurse that they wanted a urine sample. (Think they got it). When I asked the doctor why the hospital would need a urine sample, he said he didn’t know.
JD
JD Ohio,
The driver in question could move just fine. He was never unconscious and walked out of the hospital under his own power after the initial check. I think you were very lucky.
Oh heavens. Trump seems to be on some manic episode.
He’s just set aside an international privacy agreement.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/26/trump-signs-executive-order-stripping-non-citizens-of-privacy-ri/
Mind you…. I don’t know that I think the EU is sane about privacy. But… really… it’s hard to imagine there was some pressing need for this agreement to be set aside.
KEvin
Ok. You posted a factoid. Now please tell us how this points in a direction that contradicts something someone claimed. I know you seem to thing google is helpful, but it really can’t being to tell us what you think you are trying to claim.
Max_OK (Comment #158049)
January 27th, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Max states:
“Hopefully, the GOP can come up with a plan the Dems can accept rather than “take it or leave it.†If not, I wouldn’t blame the Dems for digging their heals in.”
What a breath taking bit of sophistry. It was the democrats who deliberately avoided input from Republicans on Obamacare. It was democrats who arrogantly declared Americans would have to read the ACA bill to discover what was in it- because they wrote it in secret. Now democrats have the chutzpah to demand the right to approve the replacement for their failure?
What cynical arrogance.
Re HaroldW (Comment #158050)
Harold, I wasn’t paying attention when the ACA was passed. Could the GOP have stopped or delayed passage, but didn’t try?
Hi Hunter,
I doubt if the the situation was reversed, and the G0P were in the position the Dems are in today, the GOP would just accept anything the Dems wanted rather than dig its heals.
From NYTimes today
“The president also temporarily suspended immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries and gave preference to Christians from abroad.”
The safeguards in place now seem to be preventing terrorists from those countries from emigrating to the U.S. A few may have slipped through since 9/11 but I doubt they have accounted for even 1% of all murders.
Giving preference to immigrants on the basis of religion doesn’t seem right to me. Looks like Trump is trying to make points with Christian fundamentalist.
Supposedly, increased vetting was Hillary’s policy also. And that’s usually the case – politics is posturing about small differences.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158053),
I appreciate that the EMTs and MDs have much more experience with injuries of all types, and consequent risks. That’s why I listened to them at all. But the process should involve consulting the patient, not dictating to them, and consideration of cost.
There’s an old joke about the hypochondriac, who learned of a disease without any symptoms until it was too late, and immediately said, “That’s what I have!” There are numerous remote possibilities in any situation, and a doctor is expected to know all of them. The US medical system seems to have gone from a “test if there’s some indication” to a “test if there’s any possibility” approach.
Kevin,
.
Good lord man, it’s almost as if you’re a millennial. You think there is some argument to be made, and somehow it is an imposition and we are an echo chamber because we aren’t googling something and making your argument for you.
.
News flash. If you have an argument to make about something, make it. Yourself. Nobody is going to make your argument for you. If you feel like that’s some sort of imposition, tough noogies. Also, some free advice- if you would actually like a reasoned discussion, learn some manners. I don’t know you at all, have only read a handful of your comments and already I don’t like you. Not sure why you think that would promote conversation.
.
Jeeze.
There is a funny disconnect at times with regard to the medical profession, cost of health and need for investigation.
Some Doctors make a lot of money.
They also incur a lot of responsibility.
They are held to high levels of conduct.
They are sued a lot.
Head injuries and neurosurgeons equate to the highest suing categories and doctors.
Hence procedures are put in place to help give the best care for the patient and the best avoidance of suing for the institutions and doctors involved.
Damage from head injuries can be serious,subtle or inconspicuous.
Worse than this there can be serious altering of the mental state with memory loss and confusion, aggression and irrationality.
One of the major causes can be a subdural haematoma, sometimes on the opposite side of the head to the injury.
This can happen from a simple fall from standing or a 2 foot fall from a nursing home bed.
Falls from ladders and down stairs over greater distances suggest far more risk.
I have no answers but would comment that I would be demanding of a CT head, if available, after a severe fall and would have no objection to a CT neck in such circumstances.
Lucia commented on the need to explain the costs, and if one was certain that the patient was not concussed and thinking reasonably and would not deteriorate unexpectedly and the hospital had the resources to provide in depth assessment of each and every such patient that would certainly be the way to go.
If on the other hand said doctor had 10 other equally serious people already waiting on hospital trolleys and beds then the expedient course of arranging such tasks as quickly as possible would fulfill the medical need to get an essential diagnosis, speed is the essence in such injuries and fulfill the legal obligations.
Personal assessment of severe injuries eg no pins and needles or weakness in the arms does not exclude severe cervical spine fractures.
Believing that one is alright and indeed “alright to go home” is a common finding in people suffering from confusion from a head injury or a reaction to the trauma of the situation which can result in an unreasoning panic.
The best indicators for testing are severity of injury, (any fall from over head height striking the head, loss of memory or unable to state if conscious all the time after the fall, observations from a witness of the fall or in behavioural matters someone who knows the person and is concerned about their mental state.
Finally medical observations, cuts bruises and lumps on the head, altered pupil size and memory testing.
If one has not lost consciousness and has no altered observations over 4 hours and the fall was not severe a CT would not be needed.
Witness the large number of childhood head injuries managed in this way.
Max_OK
No.
Today the DEMs are in the position the GOP was in back them. They are in a minority in the house, a minority in the Senate and they do not hold the Pres.
To a large extent, they most then can do is complain, which was the position of the GOP back them. Basically, the minority can “dig in it’s heels”, but there is no weight behind those heels. So they can’t slow or prevent motion very much.
Obama pretty much told the GOP who wanted to provide input to the ACA to go shove it: DEMS had all the power would do what they wanted.
I prefer the GOP to consider DEM input– that is not behave like the DEMS did. But the balance of power means they don’t have to do so to pretty much pass what they like as the DEMS did with the ACA.
Arab Christians are specific targets if ISIS. ISIS has been designated as committing genocide against Christians. Christians are far easier to vet than Moslem refugee applicants. Additionally, the idea of moving huge numbers if refugees far from their homes to America, unless their home country is gone like Vietnam is new. It is far cheaper to provide safe areas close to home so they can return when peace breaks out.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158065)
January 28th, 2017 at 6:24 am
“Supposedly, increased vetting was Hillary’s policy also. And that’s usually the case – politics is posturing about small differences.”
______
Vetting should be thorough, and standards should be particularly stiff for immigrants from mostly Muslim countries. But apparently what we have been doing works, so I don’t see the need to temporarily suspend immigration from those countries. If it’s posturing to please anti-Muslims, Trump should be ashamed of himself.
Max_OK
It doesn’t seem right to me either. But, oddly, I don’t think this is to make points with Christian fundamentalists.
I think he really believes that the overwhelming majority of terrorists and potential terrorists are Muslim and come from war torn countries being overrun by terrorists and almost none are from other countries or other religions. (There is some evidence to support this idea). I think he believes that targeting that sub-group for vetting is more efficient than spreading vetting around everyone. And I think he doesn’t mind inconveniencing people who have sufficient money to get on planes and fly back and forth and is perfectly willing to let them stay where they are– which in the case of those hitting our borders is often Europe. And if they aren’t currently in Europe, some of them can decide to move to Europe (or Canada or Australia).
He doesn’t even mind inconveniencing those with green cards. (What their position will be in a week I don’t know. My guess is the actual number of people with green cards who got stuck outside the US yesterday is not huge and likely they can be vetted and allowed in quickly. But it will be a HUGE, expensive inconvenience for them. I think he doesn’t care — or at least things the need to block potential terrorist is high enough. This is an “alpha error” and “beta error” thing.)
He knows it’s legal to block people who are not yet in the US, but their legal rights jump the moment they are on American soil. (This is a due process thing– so 14th amend.)
He likes to act quickly and change things to make something a “fact on the ground”. So: today whether someone like you or me thinks what he did is a “good idea”, it’s now a done deal.
Now that the “fact on the ground” are these people are blocked for 90 days– and he has legal power to extend that– agencies or congress need to figure out how to get the “extreme vetting” to be accomplished. In contrast, the day before yesterday, those who didn’t like the idea of “extreme vetting” imagined that if they dragged their heels figuring out “how to do it”, the idea would be dropped and that requirement would never be enacted.
But basically: He thinks extreme vetting of that group is necessary and he’s going to do what he can to ensure it’s done. And not spend time discussing whether it’s right, proper, blah, blah.
hunter (Comment #158072)
January 28th, 2017 at 8:28 am
Arab Christians are specific targets if ISIS. ISIS has been designated as committing genocide against Christians.
______
Muslims in Syria are fighting each other. How do you know Christians are more likely to be killed than Muslims in the conflict?
Trump implied U.S. immigration policy has been giving Muslim refugees preference over Christian refugees. How do we know that’s true?
angech
Especially in the US. Which is why they (a) order a lot of procedures (b) charge more to cover the insurance and (c) contributes to how expensive our medical care is.
Note that nothing about the ACA changed the liability to suits for doctors. That’s one of the reasons Kevin’s “factoid” means very little just hanging out there by itself. Sadly, he doesn’t want to tell us what he think the factoid tells us about the ACA or anything else. He just had “look, here’s a fact! You make my claim argument for me!”
So, I shouldn’t have slammed millenials in general. My apologies.
Max_OK
I don’t. Someone might. I suspect Trump doesn’t feel the need to know.
I don’t. Someone might. I suspect Trump doesn’t feel the need to know.
Max, come off it. ISIS targets Christians, destroys Christian ancient sites that predate Islsm, specifically asks people in newly conquered areas if they are Christian and slaughters them. Did you just skip over the part of the US Dept. of State under Obama a declaring this a genocide?
Max_OK,
“Giving preference to immigrants on the basis of religion doesn’t seem right to me”
.
Welcome to the GOP! I am so happy to see you disentangle yourself from identity politics, ha ha. Just don’t let me catch you thinking it is OK to give preference to other people based on their identity that happen to be in one’s preferred tribe.
.
Realistically one cannot imagine an identity that suffers more than Christians in ISIS governed Syria/Iraq, and to a lesser extent Egypt. They literally kill you for being Christian, they destroy your churches. You do have an option to pay a “Christian tax” to avoid death however. This isn’t a bunch of rowdies doing hate crimes, it is official policy. I would be very surprised to find a single Christian living under ISIS.
.
Max, you really should take a little time and review a few ISIS propaganda videos, you only need to do this once. It will put the word “oppression” into perspective.
Max_OK,
“Muslims in Syria are fighting each other. How do you know Christians are more likely to be killed than Muslims in the conflict?”
.
If you didn’t have a prior history this would officially be a trolling comment.
.
Genocide of Christians by ISIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Christians_by_ISIL
.
Being a Christian in Assad territory is a totally different story.
In other news, the Trump admin restores the ACA outreach ads “a day after the move sparked outcry from the law’s supporters and health insurers.” Blowback on even this seems tough to deal with apparently.
Trump, in contrast with what his followers were saying, appears to have to be taken “seriously and literally”. His chances of re-election likely went up this week (e.g., Erick Erickson’s cave).
RB,
I’m waiting to see what happens at immigration tomorrow.
Why do you think this? (No idea who Erick Erickson is nor what his cave is supposed to tell me.)
Trump policy to ban Muslims, etc.
.
The best defense here to the extent there is one is that he is responding to the priorities of voters, specifically his voters.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/188918/democrats-republicans-agree-four-top-issues-campaign.aspx
.
92% of Republican / 82% Democrats say terrorism / national security is high priority.
.
If the voters think Muslim immigration is a terrorist threat, then a politician has a few options:
1. Soothe their fears with feel good policies
2. Fix the voter’s cognitive bias on the true threat this immigration poses.
3. Convince voters the current policies are working.
4. Do nothing. Don’t get reelected.
.
Trump chose option #1, and he certainly won’t be the first or last politician to go this route. People have been trying #2 for awhile and it hasn’t been persuasive.
.
These are dead simple policies that are easy to understand. No new Muslim immigrants, no new Muslim terrorists from these countries. We don’t need panels of Ivy league experts, think tank reports, and Congressional inquiries to understand how this will stop new terrorists infiltrating via immigration.
.
There have been attacks in Europe with the help of Syria refugees, several attacks in the US were conducted by multi-generational immigrants from Muslim countries.
.
So will Trump’s order make much of a difference in actual terrorism? Unlikely, but we can never know how much terrorism we stopped via harsh immigration policy.
.
Will Trump’s plan work politically with many voters? Yes. He is at least doing something. Many voters (incorrectly) view the current policy as open flow from jihadist infested countries because people are afraid to offend Muslims due to PC.
.
And here is where the distrust in government institutions, academia, and the establishment starts to rear its ugly head. These institutions appealing to their own authority with a “it’s not a problem, trust us” speech is no longer working. The voters see Orlando and San Bernadino and the perception is the institutions are instead worrying about bathroom laws. So a policy bludgeon is used.
.
The elites are losing their ability to direct policy. Some of this is their own fault for overplaying their expertise and pushing unpopular policies.
Tom Scharf,
Something that worries me is that some (one or two) Muslims already in this country or perhaps recent converts will see Trump’s policy as an attack on Islam which they must respond to.
Lucia,
He represents the Tea Party faction who was a NeverTrumper, but he has seen enough this week to praise him . Anecdotally , I think this plays well with his voters in swing states.
(Sorry Kenneth, had to get in the links eventually)
Yes, I know Christian residents of predominately Muslim countries are victims of oppression and violence just for being Christian. I also know the current war in Syria is a rebellion against the government in power, with Muslims fighting each other, not a war between Christians and Muslims.
I don’t doubt that before the war the fatality rate (violent deaths) for Christians was worse than the rate for Muslims in Syria, but since the war pits Muslims against Muslims, I wonder if evidence shows this is still the case. I also wonder if evidence shows U.S immigration policy has given Muslim refugees preference over Christian refugees.
Not coincidentally, the Muslim ban excludes countries where Trump does business .
Ok, now I know Eric Erickson is a radio host in Atlanta GA. I still don’t know what his “cave” means or why that helps Trump get re-elected. That said: for all I know you might be right. I just have no idea what the argument underlying the claim it will help is supposed to be.
A little thought experiment on ideologies and religions. Should we give immigration preference to Christians over say Nazis?
A lot of our culturally conditioned thinking on this subject is based on the idea that “all religions are really the same and equally irrelevant.” That’s I believe largely based on ignorance. As Walter Kaufman pointed out each religion has a unique version of what mankind is and what it should become. Islam however does have a unique modern track record of violence, war, and violent persecution of Jews and other religious minorities. There is continuing sectarian violence as well. Before roughly WWII, the Islamic world was too backward and poor to be a threat. Since then, growing wealth and numbers, have brought the issue of Islam’s unique brutality to importance. The fact that numerous SS officers went to Egypt after 1945 to help complete the “final solution” in the Middle East is no accident.
Lucia,
Erick Erickson was a strident and “Christian values” based opposer of Trump who was also critical of Ted Cruz for flipping. It seems that if it plays well enough for him to flip into supporting Trump, Trump’s support in swing states and the Republican base has probably expanded.
RB,
[edit:
/ :endedit]
.
Well what’s this then? The headline says ‘Trump Group Did Business With Iranian Bank Later Linked to Terror’.
.
Look, I don’t care enough about the claim to spend a lot of time investigating it. I found a headline that seems to contradict the claim. Maybe it actually does, maybe it doesn’t. But it seems to me that what your doing here is chucking mud at Trump, not really caring if any specific claim is true, just seeing what sticks. Why do that.
Tom Scharf (Comment #158084)
January 28th, 2017 at 10:49 am
Trump policy to ban Muslims, etc.
.
The best defense here to the extent there is one is that he is responding to the priorities of voters, specifically his voters.
_______
Yes, but that’s not leadership, its marketing.
RB
Oh. For what it’s worth, I visited the links and they resulted in not informing me what you meant to claim. Perhaps you could actual provide a sentence or two that tells me the take away point you think I will glean from the l_o_n_g prose contained in those stories.
” JD Ohio, The driver in question could move just fine. He was never unconscious and walked out of the hospital under his own power after the initial check. I think you were very lucky.”
….
I agree 100% that I was very lucky. When I look at the stairway that I fell down in the dark, I am amazed that I didn’t break any bones or have any major bruises. However, the fact is that I didn’t and that the only pain I had 20 minutes after the accident was a slight stinging where the gash was. I think the major difference between myself and your friend was that I had zero, and I mean zero, pain or stiffness in my neck. It took 1.5 hours for them to try to wheel me for a CT scan and by then I knew my neck was fine. I, of course, wanted my head scanned.
The most probable explanations for the lack of injuries is that I exercise 7 days a week and that, for whatever the reason, I am a “good faller.” I don’t panic and naturally go limp when I fall.
…..
Also, I have no problem with the hospital being suspicious of a potential neck injury when I came in. However, with zero symptoms, if they were going to give me a very expensive procedure, they should have at least examined my neck and talked to me about the need for the CT. The hospital did neither.
JD
RB,
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. I now understand it enough to engage it.
I’m not persuaded one way or the other by your point– principally because I think the main swing vote was the “never hillary” people and not the religious right or Cruz supporters. I think those people weren’t going to vote for Hillary anyway– it was just a question of when they admitted they would vote for Trump.
But maybe you’re right. I don’t know.
As a practical matter, I think it’s almost pointless to talk about his re-election chances for at least 2 years. He’s going to do so many things in 2 years that these first few weeks don’t specifically matter though their effects may. In two years there will be a Congressional election. If he loses the house and senate, he’s toast in 4 years.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #158008): “Having the institution of slavery written into the constitution …”
That is not true. There is no direct mention of slavery in the Constitution prior to the 13th Amendment banning slavery. The Framers were careful to avoid that, even when inserting the 3/5 compromise and in Article 1 section 9, specifically so as to not give slavery any official approval in the Constitution.
Angech: “speed is the essence in such injuries [substantial head trauma] and fulfill the legal obligations.”
…..
If that is the case and the standard, the hospital was derelict because my first doctor examination was 3 hours after I came in. (Personally, I have no problem with the wait, other than the inconvenience because I was feeling fine.) Also, no one examined my neck or even talked to me about it.
….
Angech, second comment: “If one has not lost consciousness and has no altered observations over 4 hours and the fall was not severe a CT would not be needed. Witness the large number of childhood head injuries managed in this way.”
….
That is pretty close to what happened to me. I didn’t get to see a doctor until 3 hours after I came in (About 3.5 hours after the fall). I didn’t lose consciousness and had zero neck symptoms and virtually no head symptoms other than bleeding and minor stinging at the point of the gash. I definitely wanted the head scan, but I saw no need, and see no need for a neck ct scan, in this case, particularly when it would have been administered 3.5 hours after the accident.
….
I want to make clear that I don’t have problems with the treatment per se. I do think the hospital personnel were following administrative protocol designed to enhance the hospital’s profit (that they didn’t necessarily agree with) by routinely prescribing the neck ct scan.
JD
HaroldW: “I seem to recall that the ACA was passed that way. Why apply a different standard to its repeal?”
I see no need to apply a different standard to its repeal, but a wider base of support should be expected of its replacement. Otherwise, we just get wide swings in policy every time power changes hands.
Tom Scharf (Comment #158080)
” Just don’t let me catch you thinking it is OK to give preference to other people based on their identity that happen to be in one’s preferred tribe.”
David Young (Comment #158091)
“A little thought experiment on ideologies and religions. Should we give immigration preference to Christians over say Nazis?”
______
I oppose giving priority to immigrants based on religion. As for Nazis, we already have U.S. born citizens who think like Nazis and claim to be Christians. I don’t believe we need more, but to be consistent I guess I also would have to oppose giving preference based on ideology, unless the ideology is to forcefully take over our government
If anyone deserves immigration preference, I would say it’s agnostics.
They don’t fight over religion or knock on your door and say be like us.
Max_OK,
Probably not obvious, but I really don’t care much about immigration. I’m not bent out of shape if we either ban Muslims or let more in.
.
As for concrete actions, it was reported that the San Bernadino shooter had (privately) posted on social media that she supported violent jihad and wanted to be a part of it before she emigrated.
.
U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Online Zealotry
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino-attacks-us-visa-process-tashfeen-maliks-remarks-on-social-media-about-jihad-were-missed.html?_r=0
.
I think what “extreme vetting” means is more aggressively uncovering stuff like this.
.
Obama ordered a review of this vetting process after this was discovered, which of course noone had a problem with. If Trump does this it is Islamaphobic etc. which is where this discussion breaks down. It is fairly surprising how little is actually done:
.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/homeland-security-social-media-refugees.html
“The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, uses social media as part of the screening process for Syrian refuges, but only when the person is flagged because of a hit in an intelligence database or when questions are raised during an interview with immigration officials.
The agency does not have the ability to reach private communications sent via direct messaging.”
.
This is actually a manual review process agent by agent, not automated, and only done for Syrians. Ultimately I think they want to tie the NSA database with immigration.
.
Trying harder here would seem to be uncontroversial and not have to result in name calling.
Mike M. (Comment #158101)
“I see no need to apply a different standard to its repeal, but a wider base of support should be expected of its replacement. Otherwise, we just get wide swings in policy every time power changes hands.”
________
Wise words !
Less fighting, more agreement.
Max, Yes, we have all kinds of extremists in the US, mostly marginal vanishingly small segments of the population. We don’t have an Islamic state where there is no concept of separation of church and state. We don’t have constant brutality and barbarity as is common in the Islamic world.
The problem I see here is the ideologically motivated and ignorant denial that the Islamic world is mostly a hellhole mostly because of Islam. Public opinion polls in the Islamic world show a high level of support for terrorism.
Tom Scharf, The problem here I think is the same problem we had in the 1930’s with the denial that Nazism and Communism were dangerous ideologies whose existence was an existential threat. Most people (who are themselves uncommitted to a religion or an ideology) are unable to see this problem without carefully studying history. Ideology matters and being in denial about it is natural to the modern Western mind. Radical Islam is an existential threat to Western values.
j ferguson:
“Something that worries me is that some (one or two) Muslims already in this country or perhaps recent converts will see Trump’s policy as an attack on Islam which they must respond to.”
.
I’ve never been a fan of the argument “don’t say something bad about the people who are shooting innocent civilians in our country or they might get even madder”.
.
People understand the difference between Islam and Islamic jihadists. I also think Muslims understand the difference between a war on Islamic jihad and a war on Islam.
.
But more terrorists are certainly possible, eventually a straw breaks a camel’s back. I would argue that they already have plenty of reasons to commit jihad based on how many Muslim countries we are actively bombing and plenty lone wolves have already turned to jihad based on ISIS propaganda alone.
.
The unanswerable question is would the policy prevent more terrorists than it creates?
Mark Bofill,
I’m sorry if I’m offending your reality, but these are the countries his organization does business with *now* and there is no Iran in that list.
Tom Scharf,
your points are good. My suspicion is that if our policy looks anti-Muslim, it will provoke trouble internally. There seems little experience with jihadist who actually do something violent making it through our previous vetting hurdles. It might be worthwhile to consider that the vetted are now known to some degree while our domestic miscreants may not be. so don’t provoke the domestics.
While you are at it, could you expand a little on ‘doc fix’ which was part of one of your earlier posts and which I couldn’t understand.
Tom, I would argue this distinction between Islam and Islamic Jihadism is problematic. There was of course a difference between the SS and the Wehrmacht in terms of their level of fanaticism. The problem is that Nazism was a militant, violent, and hateful ideology. Would it be possible to imagine a “good” Nazi regime? Perhaps. But the larger problem here is simply that Nazism is a bad ideology. There are of course graduations of evil and badness.
The Christians are under genocidal threat. We have limited resources. This information resistant position held by far too many, that it is somehow immoral to give this small minority assistance is disturbingly similar to the attitude by so many”enlightened” in the West when Jews were pleading for help in 1930s Germany.
RB,
.
Thanks RB. I don’t know what ‘offending *my* reality’ means, unless you are implying I live in my own separate reality? If so. Heh. That’s pretty witty. Thanks for the chuckle.
.
So, regarding this:
.
Your original link says this:
.
This appears to be false. You can of course believe what you like, but having found without much trouble evidence that contradicts a claim in your link, I’m not inclined to take the rest of it too seriously.
.
Like I said, I’m not much interested in this specific claim. I think it’d be pretty naive to imagine that Trump isn’t looking out for his own interests while in office, so I sort of assume that as a given.
.
Does the fact that you did not address my suggestion that you are merely slinging mud mean that you agree with me on that point?
.
Thanks [again] RB.
David Young,
Any time the term Nazi is brought up it poisons the well. I have read 1000 times now that Trump and his followers are the real Nazi’s.
.
The west recognizes radical Islam as a threat. We dropped 26,000 bombs on them last year. The reality is they are a much bigger threat to other Muslims for the time being. 400,000 have died in Syria, a few hundred in ISIS attacks in the west.
.
The belief by many is this poisonous ideology will burn itself out because “it is on the wrong side of history” (groan, ha ha). This may be accurate, or maybe not. Best case is the Muslims stamp this out themselves with our help. Great plan if it works.
.
I think we are a long way off from WWIII Islam vs not-Islam and we have almost all the nuclear weapons and China / Russia will be on our side. So end of times fears are overblown. The Cold War was legitimately scary, this by comparison is not.
.
In nations with significant Muslim populations, much disdain for ISIS
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/in-nations-with-significant-muslim-populations-much-disdain-for-isis/
j ferguson:
Doc fix is fraud. This was probably not stated very well. More exactly: The way doc fix was used in the ACA budgeting process was dishonest.
.
My understanding:
Congress passed a law to reduce Medicare spending x% per year. This never happened, but the law still stood. So every year Congress had to put a fix in the budget to pay for the extra medicare costs that were “illegal”. The doc fix. The doc fix amount grew and grew. The ACA budgeted medical costs on the assumption doc fix was not in effect and the lower medical rates would be used, knowing full well it actually costs more. Dishonest IMO.
.
It should be noted that the CBO is forced to the run the budget numbers based on the laws currently on the books, so doc fix was excluded and their hands were tied. The ACA backers pretended it wasn’t an actual budget problem.
Tom, The reason to bring up Nazism is the historical connection between it and Islam, which is closer than most people realize.
I would call ISIS, Al Quada, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood (and hundreds of other less well known Islamic organizations throughout the Middle East) the Waffen SS of Islam. Assad and the Iranian Mullahs are the SS. The Saudis are perhaps the Wehrmacht even though the Saudis have strong connections to Islamic propaganda outlets in the West and to 9/11.
So, I guess my question is whether you can really rationalize the Idea the Islam is “just another religion.” I personally think its a dangerous ideology. Your linked Pew Research surveys deal with ISIS, not with the huge number of violent mainstream Islamic organizations that dot the Muslim world that have widespread support. The vast majority of the Islamic world support the “final solution” in the Holy land advocated by the Hamas and the Palestinian leadership. Citing such polling may make us feel good, but its misleading.
Max_OK,
So how do you answer hunter’s point about German Jews prior to WWII? IMO, it’s exactly the same situation.
David Young,
There is little doubt that if ISIS was in charge we would be converting to Islam or getting marched to the gas chambers. I think you are confusing questions of “is jihad ever justified” with “is it OK to kill all non-Muslims”. There is a rather large leap there. I imagine most Muslims would defend their land and religion if it was truly under attack, so would we. I just don’t see tank and jet fighter factories going into mass production in Muslim countries, they don’t even have a striking logo or one armed salute yet.
.
I look for signs countries are preparing for WWIII or want to exterminate races, not that they resemble something the Germans did in 1930.
.
I find North Korea scarier than the Muslim world. You want to see crazy, watch the “Under the Sun” documentary.
Max_OK,
In fact Christians from the Middle East are under-represented in admission to the US. If one assumes that disparate impact is a valid way to measure discrimination, then according to the data, Muslim immigrants are favored over Christians. So you should be opposed to the current policy.
http://www.newsweek.com/us-bar…..ria-497494
Tom Scharf,
So do I. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t think that Islam may well be an existential threat in the long term.
I broke the link when I cut and pasted.
http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugees-syria-497494
Tom and DeWitt, I find North Korea scary but only a little. North Korea is a totally local phenomena and there is not “ideology” associated with is weird form of tin pot dictatorship.
The problem with Islam is that it is a long lived growing in power and numbers ideology that is an existential threat to Western ideas. It is possible in the next generation some European countries will become Muslim majority countries. Will they become Islamic states with Sharia law? If that were to happen, it would a tragedy and sign that WWIII might be imminent. We need to fight this ideological battle now if we want to survive as a Western society. Whitewashing Islam doesn’t help anyone except in the short term people who don’t like the West anyway and perhaps some cynical Democrat politicians.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158119)
January 28th, 2017 at 1:56 pm
Max_OK,
In fact Christians from the Middle East are under-represented in admission to the US. If one assumes that disparate impact is a valid way to measure discrimination, then according to the data, Muslim immigrants are favored over Christians.
______
Do you have evidence the under-representation is a result of U.S. immigration policy?
Max_OK,
In the real world, it doesn’t matter if it’s policy or not. It’s happening. Disparate impact is used all the time in the US to justify applying affirmative action. The US Supreme Court has upheld it’s use in a Fair Housing Act claim.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158116)
January 28th, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Max_OK,
I oppose giving priority to immigrants based on religion.
So how do you answer hunter’s point about German Jews prior to WWII? IMO, it’s exactly the same situation.
______
European Jews were persecuted for being born as Jews, no matter what religious beliefs they held. An atheist Jew was still a Jew to the Nazis. Belief or no belief, it didn’t matter. It’s similar to the persecution Blacks received just for being born Black, although not as severe.
I favor giving preference to immigrants who are being persecuted for any reason. I would have to think about prioritizing all the reasons, but top priority would go to immigrants most likely to be killed if they didn’t emigrate, regardless of whether they were at risk because of their religion, politics, birth, or some other reason.
This is not to say that I’m a big fan of using disparate impact. I’m not. Progressives, however, seem to be big fans, unless, as in this case apparently, the results aren’t PC.
Max_OK,
Then you should be in favor of giving Christian immigrants from the Middle East priority.
eWitt Payne (Comment #158124)
January 28th, 2017 at 3:07 pm
Max_OK,
In the real world, it doesn’t matter if it’s policy or not. It’s happening. Disparate impact is used all the time in the US to justify applying affirmative action.
______
Sure, but you need plaintiffs.
Are Syrian Christians complaining U.S. immigration gives priority to Syrian Moslems?
Are Syrian Moslems complaining U.S. Immigration gives priority to Syrian Christians?
mark bofill,
In case it was not clear with my specific objection (where he has ongoing business interests), my answer is very clearly NO.
RB,
.
My apologies sir. I am not trying to be offensive.
.
[Edit: Well.. suggesting that somebody is slinging mud is sort of offensive. Sometimes speaking frankly I say offensive things, I regret that. My intent was not to offend you, RB. Once again, I apologize if I have done so.]
.
Kahlid Sheik Mohammed went to college in North Carolina in the 1980s.
.
al Awlaki grew up and later went to college in the US.
.
Even Sayyid Qutb ( a recent, though by no means the first godfather of modern jihad ) studied in Colorado in the 1940s.
.
There was no specific casus belli. It’s not because Trump or anyone else has or will piss somebody off. Rather, the hate does stem from what the west is and represents. It is very much about religion. That doesn’t mean we are at war with the religion. And, if we were, we’d have already lost ( the membership numbers indicate a severe disadvantage ).
.
But the reason there is jihad is very much because of what is in the religious text. That doesn’t mean every Muslim is a violent extremist, far from it, most are civil. But the call to war is in the Quran. The name Islam describes the conflict – submission to god’s will versus the west’s freedom to choose a god to submit to, or even whether to submit to any. Singular Mosque as the State, versus the west’s separation of church and state.
.
Jihad is in the Quran but most Muslims don’t practice jihad which may mean that most Muslims take the Quran figuratively not literally. But that’s difficult to do, because reputedly, Mohamed dictated the Quran verbatim to the angels.
.
I think Trump’s guy Flynn is right to raise the reality that the struggle is completely about religion, because that changes the assumptions and decisions about what to do. Both Bush ( Global War on Terrahr ) and Obama ( Overseas Contingency Operations ) bent over backwards to avoid mentioning Isalm.
But this omission allowed forgetting about the primacy of religion to the motivation of the Islamists. And it allowed war to be the focal point instead of the history, ideology, and local opinions.
.
Since the struggle is about religion, it may be time to step back, read history, consider motivations and likely outcomes before continuing what hasn’t worked so far.
Heck I don’t know. I’ve been in a grouchy mood all day. Maybe I was deliberately being offensive. I apologize for that. There.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158127)
January 28th, 2017 at 3:24 pm
Max_OK,
but top priority would go to immigrants most likely to be killed if they didn’t emigrate
Then you should be in favor of giving Christian immigrants from the Middle East priority.
_____
No, you are basing preference on religion, not on who is most likely to be killed. A Syrian Moslem who has spoken out against the government could be in more danger of being killed than a Syrian Christian who has just been minding his own business.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158131)
Eddie you said “But the reason there is jihad is very much because of what is in the religious text. That doesn’t mean every Muslim is a violent extremist, far from it, most are civil.”
You also said “I think Trump’s guy Flynn is right to raise the reality that the struggle is completely about religion, because that changes the assumptions and decisions about what to do. Both Bush ( Global War on Terrahr ) and Obama ( Overseas Contingency Operations ) bent over backwards to avoid mentioning Isalm.”
______
Maybe Bush and Obama saw no profit in alienating all Muslims if most are civil.
mark bofill,
Appreciate it, but you don’t have to apologize. Blog land is generally rough and tumble (quite likely my comments are offensive).
RB,
That’s gracious of you, thanks.
Max_OK,
But we have not been admitting Muslim refugees on the basis of whether they were in specific danger. This article described the extended vetting for Syrian refugees. I don’t see anything about politics or political asylum in the list.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/20/us/why-it-takes-two-years-for-syrian-refugees-to-apply-to-enter-the-united-states.html
Christians are being persecuted in the Middle East because they are Christian, whether they are minding their own business or not. They’re not even safe in the refugee camps. And we have, statistically, been discriminating against Christians, not favoring them or even being neutral.
TE, Yes I agree. This issue is about a religion that is also a political ideology. There is no concept of mosque state separation in Islam. All other major religions have such a concept. In Christianity its “Render unto Ceasar those things that are Ceasar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Max_OK,
Maybe Bush and Obama were wrong. We alienate many Muslims simply because we’re not Muslims.
The question here is why should we admit any refugees? The only acceptable answers are if it benefits us or if it saves lives. We are totally in charge of how we do that and what criteria we use. No one has a “right” to come here.
And this gets to basic philosophy about what a country is and why it exists. The old view was that different countries had different cultures, ethnic makeups, and different laws and that was a good thing. The US Constitution was founded on that basis. The origin of universalist thinking was in conquest and its ideological justification. That has been taken up by our new snowflake leftists who are universalist and anti-diversity. They actually hate real diversity of thought and ethnicity. Thus, Israel is hated not because it is Jewish (well that helps intensify the hatred among Muslims) but because it is different and explicitly Jewish. That violates one of the cardinal dogmas of political correctness.
Max-OK,
If the EU, USA, and Britain declaring by unanimous vote that there is genocide of Christians by ISIS and there use of the women as sex slaves can’t convince you of anything, then there is nothing left to do.
.
Go open a church in Raqqa and start passing out Bibles and see how that goes for you. Equivocating on somebody proving they aren’t persecuted more is ridiculous.
.
Yes, that’s a good point. For the first four hundred years ( until Constantine’s conversion ) Christianity was an underground religion without political power.
.
That did change with the adoption by the Romans. Medieval kings did appropriate religion, claiming divine right, so church and state did merge back. And it took countless bloody wars, Martin Luther, the Treaty of Westphalia, Henry the VIII’s divorce, the enlightenment, the US constitution, the French Revolution and French dedication to secularism to wedge them back apart.
How frustrating to see posters who are typically well informed and amenable to facts so resistant to facts and so uninformed (deliberately? conveniently?) in the case of the well documented genocide of Christians in the radicalized areas of the Middle East by ISIS.
It is almost as if those people avoiding admitting to the ground facts are bigoted or something, the way they dance around the core issue.
Any excuse to declare Trump is some sort of whack, when time and time again he is found to be correct: phonied up “intel report”, illegals voting, etc. etc. etc.
Tom Scharf (Comment #158142)
January 28th, 2017 at 4:29 pm
Max-OK,
If the EU, USA, and Britain declaring by unanimous vote that there is genocide of Christians by ISIS and there use of the women as sex slaves can’t convince you of anything, then there is nothing left to do.
_______
Tom, you got me wrong.
Up thread in (Comment #158088) I said
“Yes, I know Christian residents of predominately Muslim countries are victims of oppression and violence just for being Christian.”
Tom, what I can’t accept is the notion any Christian in Syria is more likely to be killed by violence than any Muslim in Syria.
.
Well, as I hope came out in my comments, the idea is not to castigate Muslims, but to understand the nature of the conflict. And maybe privately both Bush and Obama did understand, but maybe they didn’t and at least privately understanding that this is completely about religion leads to the misapprehension that we can bomb our way out of this problem.
.
Along those lines, how many Muslims are alienated by bombing innocent babies with drone strikes?
.
I did read the Greater Middle East Initiative which did resonate with me. Creating a pluralistic democracy in the middle east that could be a positive counter to militant theocracy seemed quite reasonable. Obama gave up on this approach, but to be fair, that’s what he was elected to do. Getting in to Iraq was popular by a large majority. Getting out of Iraq was popular by a large majority. In retrospect, both were mistakes. And getting out set the stage for Daesh and the Syrian refugees which prompted this thread.
.
The people I know from Muslim countries are mostly atheists. It makes me think of the story of the stranger visiting Northern Ireland who when stopped and asked what religion he was, replied ‘Atheist’. To which his inquisitor responded, ‘But what kind? Catholic Atheist? or Protestant Atheist?’
.
I think Atheists of all religions get along pretty well.
TE, Yes in Medieval times Christianity was appropriated by kings. But I would argue that that was only possible because it was the dark ages and no one could read the Bible except the priests. The Priests who were captives of the Crown carefully hid it from the masses until Luther translated the Bible into German. Then the floodgates were opened. Christianity was by its nature founded to be independent of the State and appeal to people based on its message.
Max_OK,
You continue to miss the point. Current policy has discriminated against Syrian Christians, intentionally or not. That could be corrected by giving some preference to Christian refugees. If that offends you’re sensibilities, then you should logically be opposed to any sort of affirmative action for past discrimination for any reason.
I’m betting that you are not opposed to, say, affirmative action based on race. However, I’m also betting that you can weasel your way around this minor problem in moral logic.
I agree with DeWitt. Muslims are alienated by many things. Women who don’t cover themselves, dogs, pigs, Jews, Christians, if you are a Suni, Shia alienate you. If you are a Shia Sunis alienate you. The problem here is that an alienated Muslim thinks Allah comments him to kill those who alienate him. Our problem is that we, i.e., Western culture, alienates and angers Muslims. It is stupid to try to “not make them angrier.” Many of them already support terrorism and suicide bombings. We can and should cooperate with Muslims who are willing to do so. But censoring who we are is not appropriate. In my opinion people who are alienated by us should not be allowed in this country.
As far as the “all atheists get along” meme. Recall that Communism was explicitly atheist. I suppose the Soviet Union and Communist China got along perfectly. Stalin got along so well with all his fellow Communists that he killed at least 20 million of them. Of course Western atheists were often whitewashers of Communist atrocities. One of those things that is never written about.
Please, the attempt to associate religion with all our conflicts is wrong. It just so happens that Islam is an exceptional religion in its nature.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158138)
” And we have, statistically, been discriminating against Christians, not favoring them or even being neutral.”
______
Dewiitt, you could support your opinion with evidence showing we turn away a larger percentage of Christians refugees than Muslims refugees from Syria. I suspect it’s the other way around.
By refugees, I mean the number who want to emigrate ( by applying). Among applicants, I imagine Muslim greatly outnumber
outnumber Christian because there a lot more of them, but this would not be evidence of U.S. immigration giving preference to Muslims
hunter (Comment #158144)
How frustrating to see posters who are typically well informed and amenable to facts so resistant to facts and so uninformed (deliberately? conveniently?) in the case of the well documented genocide of Christians in the radicalized areas of the Middle East by ISIS.
_____
hunter, I recognize that Christians are persecuted in predominately Muslim countries, but I thought the issue here was vetting refugees who want to emigrate. We are vetting individuals not entire religions. U’S. immigration doesn’t say if you are Christian, welcome to America, but if you are Musilm, goodbye, we don’t want your kind.
Max_OK,
Did you bother to read the Newsweek article I linked? Apparently not. Syrian Christians can only be referred to the US if they’re in UN refugee camps.
Estimates are that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 Christians have fled Syria. It beggars the imagination that no more than 56 have actually been admitted to the US of the 10,800 Syrians to the US. But they can’t get in if if they can’t apply. A solution to the problem would be to allow Christian refugees to apply directly rather than through the UN. But I’m sure you will think that’s giving preference by religion.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158148)
Max_OK,
I’m betting that you are not opposed to, say, affirmative action based on race. However, I’m also betting that you can weasel your way around this minor problem in moral logic.
______
If moral logic says getting killed is no different than being passed up for a promotion, then I reject moral logic.
I have mixed feelings about affirmative action, and I’m not sure I can weasel around the way I feel. I will say if affirmative action gives me an advantage over you, I would be for it, but if affirmative action gives you an advantage, it’s a bad thing.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158154)
January 28th, 2017 at 6:53 pm
Max_OK,
Did you bother to read the Newsweek article I linked?
Dewitt, I tried, but couldn’t find it, Really, i did.
DeWitt says “A solution to the problem would be to allow Christian refugees to apply directly rather than through the UN. But I’m sure you will think that’s giving preference by religion.’
DeWitt, let them both apply directly. Then there would be no preference by religion.
Max_OK,
I’ll try again. I broke the link in the first post, but posted a working link a couple of posts later.
http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugees-syria-497494
Max_OK,
Your google-fu is sorely lacking, by the way. For me, at least, searching on ‘newsweek syrian christian refugees’ had the article in question first on the list.
David Young:
It’s late. What you have written is not accurate in the sense that there is no Islamic guidance on living a devout life in a non Muslim state. There is. It’s been some years since I read it. ‘ll do my best to find and refer you to it. My memory was that it was recognized that there would be challenges for a Muslim living in an alien culture but it was not forbidden nor was the believer in any way obligated to overthrow the host, assuming that treatment of Muslims was benign.
What you specifically say is that there is no mosque-state separation in Islam. I would suggest that this is a function of the states where it is true, because there are certainly many where it is not true. I assumed you might have meant what I suggest above relative to living a devout Islamic life in an infidel state.
DeWitt, thank you for your patience with the links. Your latest one took me to the story. I hope the following link works for you
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/28/trumps-claim-that-it-is-very-tough-for-christian-syrians-to-get-to-the-united-states/?utm_term=.3472c350a254
The Post fact checker found omission of some important information about the Christian refugees, and gave Trump two Pinocchoes for his statement about how tough it is for them to get into the U.S.
As I indicated previously, I do believe Christians are victims of religious persecution in Muslim dominated countries. But I also believe emigration priority should be given to refugees whose life’s are in the most danger if they return home, whether the reason be religion, politics, or birth.
I hope the link to the Post article works.
j ferguson,
I can think of a few Muslim majority countries with truly secular governments, but not ‘many’. I think the larger point is that even in countries where this is true, there is usually internal pressure from clerics and the devout to institute sharia law, administered by clerics, in place of secular law (eg Turkey). There is no parallel I can think of in formally Christian countries… nobody is agitating for a government based on religious authorities.
.
On the other hand there are multiple countries where Islam and government are nearly one in the same. This is unique to Islam. The demand of ‘the faithful’ to expand sharia to all countries is both very real and a continuing cause of violence around the world. Mr Obama believes otherwise, of course, but he is terribly mistaken, and his idiotic refusal to say ‘Islamic terrorists’ is but one of the sorry consequences.
Reading Max”s rationalizations is pretty entertaining in a dark humor sort of way.
SteveF,
When you say ‘truly secular’ you raise the ante. Perhaps limiting mosque state separation to those states not run by clerics also exaggerated David Young’s point.
Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, the Islamic states formerly members of Soviet Union, Egypt, Syria, Iraq.
This is not to say that their legal systems are not largely Sharia oriented.
There certainly isn’t any doubt that there is a global Islamist fundamentalist drive to expand control over governments of largely Muslim populations.
Max_ok,
.
This likely isn’t the right time to ask, if you feel as if you’ve been ‘piled on’ for your position on priority of Christian immigrants. There are no tonal or facial expression cues in blog posts, so I want to explicitly let you know that I am asking this out of good natured curiosity and not in any attempt to attack, mock, belittle, or …anything else deliberately nasty I guess:
.
.
You’ve made a similar comment at least once before, of the form ‘if good for me I’m for it, if good for you I’m not’. Are you making a joke that I’m just not getting? Or are you making some point about subjective morality? Or am I looking for meaning in tea leaves? [Edit: All of these are real questions]
.
Thanks in advance. I disagree with you on several things, but I admire your tenacity and ability to retain good manners under fire. 🙂 Your positions make for interesting conversation.
So it would appear that the Trump Administration managed, with the immigration suspension EO, to leave a bad taste in an otherwise pretty good week. The EO was disorganized making it in some ways unenforceable. It was poorly communicated, leaving supporters ill equipped to defend it and giving opponents the upper hand in defining it. They had better get their act together quickly because the opposition is not going to grant, as we have seen clearly, any benefit of the doubt. And the risk that supporters get worn out is also real.
I imagine what Trump did here is make Syria Immigration into Disney World, there is an Express Line (Christians) and the Long Line (Everyone else, Muslims). This is more likely due to threat assessment than mistreatment, even though both exist. I don’t know what prevents a militant from showing up wearing a Make America Great Again hat and holding a Bible singing Praise the Lord and getting through the Express Line.
.
Both sides only see one group in the line, the left sees starving peace loving women and children, the right sees blood thirsty terrorists wearing suicide belts.
.
What is reasonable care in immigration? How do we screen out potential terrorists? How much risk are we willing to take?
.
Institutional trust is low. The people don’t trust DHS can screen properly. The media was showing pictures of little Muslim girls hugging their Muslim grandmas in wheelchairs at airports. Only one side gets told, institutional credibility drops another notch.
“The U.S. spent $8,233 on health per person in 2010. Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the next highest spenders, but in the same year, they all spent at least $3,000 less per person…”
[probably others responded above; I can’t page through all this…]
Sigh. Kevin O’Neill, you seem to know very little about the subject, and think you know everything. Study a little more, and you will find out that US health care costs are increasing at the exact same rate as Europe’s and all developed countries’. Our costs are higher because our baseline is higher: we pay our health care workers, doctors, nurses, techs, OTs, all of them, half again as much as anyone else in the world. Our hospitals were built bigger on average and cost more to run.
All this has been true for decades, and _there is nothing we can do about it_. Are you planning to pay doctors less? Have you heard about the Medicare Fix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Sustainable_Growth_Rate)?
Read more, sneer less.
Hi MikeR, can those statistics be normalized (if that’s the right word – maybe leveled) for percentage of population treated annually, magnitude of repairs, relative payroll costs, liability insurance cost, and so forth?
If a population is healthier, one might supposed per capita healthcare cost could be less,
less elderly? different last gasp (hospice?) treatment.
It could be that our system is actually a pretty good deal if we look at our apples along with theirs.
J Ferguson, The point I was making is that in Islam the ideology/religion, there is Sharia Law and the demand that everyone abide by it or face sanctions. There is no concept of a separate secular state. In Christian doctrine, there is a clear distinction between Christian institutions and those of the state.
David Young
I believe Jesus said something like “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.
Max_OK,
Trump statement was hyperbole. But that’s Trump. Even the WaPo, however, admitted that the numbers indicate that there’s a problem.
And if pigs had wings… Politicians exaggerate. Trump is at the far end of that scale. At least he knows there may be a problem and wants something done, unlike the previous administration.
Detaining legal US residents at airports, however, is, IMO, beyond the pale. A travel ban might not be unreasonable, but if people were already on a plane in the air and they had valid visa’s or green cards, they should not have been detained, much less threatened with deportation.
I know a Sanford Professor from Lebanon who is Christian. He is a perfect addition to our country and a brilliant individual. He told me about what happened in Lebanon, a country that used to be called the Switzerland of the middle east. Lebanon used to be a Christian majority country. As Muslims became the majority, it rapidly fell into chaos and became a very dangerous country for everyone. People in the West tend to lie to themselves about these matters.
Volokh’s J. Adler on the legality and incompetence of the way this was done
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/29/president-trump-may-hire-only-the-best-people-but-he-did-not-rely-upon-them-to-draft-and-implement-his-latest-executive-order/?utm_term=.87df851dd19c#comments
[…]
And so on…
Lucia, If I may paraphrase Adler: This EO was perfectly legal and previous administrations did exactly the same thing and it will withstand judicial review. BUT, it was done without sufficient internal review and input from Justice Department lawyers and therefore is somehow wrong or troubling. Why would anyone care?
David Young,
That’s not my reading. I read it as that Trump had legal authority to issue an EO banning immigration from specific countries. The issued EO, however, was deeply flawed and may not stand up to judicial review.
Banning new immigrants and preventing legal residents from re-entering the country are two completely different issues. If enforcement of the order had been limited to the first point, I doubt that you would have seen a federal judge issue an emergency order suspending the EO.
I agree the airport thing was ridiculously inept. Certainly this goes back to Trump but I doubt the EO specifically says detain people in airports so everyone looks bad. It’s possible this was a literal interpretation that didn’t need to be done, or its the way they always do it, at some point in time there is a cutoff and people get detained and that time was clearly specified in the EO, its just a matter of when. The EO probably could have given a 7 day notice to clear this up. These are the kind of mistakes people who aren’t in government make. Rookie error.
Hopefully this is a rookie mistake and the Trump Administration will learn from it and move forward. It is not as long term bad as, say, unilaterally ending the defensive anti-missile system from Europe with no consultation or notice to our allies. This mistake is painful but inherently shallow…. unless the Administration doubles down on it. But this is *Trump’s* mistake. He owns this. And unlike his predecessor, people on all sides are willing to point out his mistakes. The important thing, beyond if he can more or less gracefully get out of it, is if he and his team learn from it so that other actions, EO, nominations, legislative proposals etc. will be effective and seen to be effective by enough people to make it stick.
Lucia’s quote says explicitly that the EO would withstand judicial review.
I just watched in full Sean Spicer’s appearance with Martha Radditz on the Clinton News Network and found it enlightening. Radditz’s questions where emotional and based on her lack of doing any homework, for example the one about why give preference to Christians. As pointed above here, the legal basis for the refugee program clearly supports this because Christians are a persecuted minority in virtually all Muslim countries.
Anyone who believes what they hear from Radditz on CNN is not fully aware of what bias looks like.
Tom Scharf,
Looking at the text of the EO, the wording is ambiguous.
That could easily be interpreted as banning non-citizens with permanent legal residence, green card holders, from re-entering the country. I hope that wasn’t the intent, however. If it was just meant to stop issuance of visas for immigrants and non-immigrants, it’s ambiguously worded. That’s probably sufficient grounds for it to be overturned by the federal courts.
David Young,
Read the whole article. It says no such thing. The key words in lucia’s quote are: “Under normal circumstances….”
That doesn’t read as if Adler thinks this EO will withstand judicial review.
mark bofill (Comment #158167)
“You’ve made a similar comment at least once before, of the form ‘if good for me I’m for it, if good for you I’m not’. Are you making a joke that I’m just not getting? Or are you making some point about subjective morality? Or am I looking for meaning in tea leaves? [Edit: All of these are real questions]
.
Thanks in advance. I disagree with you on several things, but I admire your tenacity and ability to retain good manners under fire. 🙂 Your positions make for interesting conversation.
_______
Mark, thank you for the kind words. I was joking, trying to lighten the conversation, when I told DeWitt “if I will say if affirmative action gives me an advantage over you, I would be for it, but if affirmative action gives you an advantage, it’s a bad thing.”
As I told DeWitt, I have mixed feelings about affirmative action.
If two applicants or candidates are equally qualified in every way, I can see giving the minority person preference, unless the the other candidate is from a more disadvantaged background. I’m not familiar enough with affirmative action to know if backgrounds are taken into consideration or given weight.
Dewitt probably has lots of money so I would favor a change in the tax code that taxed him more and me less. Would I favor the change even if had more money than Dewitt? Yes, but not as much.
DeWit, It appears I did not read far enough and you are right about the full context. We will see what actually happens in the courts. You may recall that judicial review didn’t impact most of Obama’s very controversial orders. In fact, the Obama administration adopted the remarkably odious policy of simply lying to courts about DACA and refusing to obey court orders. And there was silence in the media.
Trump did make a public relations mistake here in that the media was bound to jump on any slight oversight or error. Given the media whitewashed fact that 9/11 was perpetrated by recent visitors from Saudi Arabia, some of whom overstayed their visas, I regard tightening vetting as a very good thing. We have just had too many whitewashed terrorist incidents done by visitors or members of the refugee community to continue to turn a blind eye. The criminal track record in Europe for recent “migrants” is also terrible and also whitewashed by particularly German authorities.
Thanks Max, I see now. 🙂
David Young,
I don’t think you have paraphrased Adler’s post correctly and have left out important points and the issue of “troubling” is not the main one. The issue of “more likely to get tossed out as invalid by a judge” is the important point.
Among other things:
1) When something is done incorrectly, it can become illegal for those reasons.
2) When some things are on the borderline and could go either way, judges give ‘deference’ to the executive branch on the grounds that this was well thought out blah… blah. In this case, it was clearly done so ineptly, willi-nilly and with so little thought, the judges are unlikely to extend deference to the judicial branch. So to the extent that something is borderline the judge won’t defer to the executive in this case. (And this is a legal principle in our system BTW.)
Adler ‘s (and others’) point seems to be that had this been better thought out taking care to consider more consequences, Trump could have created a bill that is mostly the same and had it held up completely because it would have been completely ok. And with respect to anything that is a close call, they could get that by way of “deference”. But there are details that are likely to be tossed and other things are much more likely to be tossed out by a judge because this was so slipshod.
I mean… come on… No matter how much in favor you are of the bill it was idiotic to:
1) Not give at least a 12 hour grace period for those who were on board airplanes scheduled to land when the bill was signed. That way the airlines would have prevented lots of people from boarding before leaving and those people would be in their originating countries.
2) Not exempt those who had worked with the military. (Obviously, such travelers might be delayed on arrival. Call might have to be made. But at least the exemption would be there.)
3) Not give green card holders at least a two week exemption to get the heck home. Likely the same for student visas. ( Lucky for most students, semesters began earlier in January. So most are here already.)
I realize that someone who boarded at midnight 1 hour after the order was signed might be a terrorist. But a terrorist who landed 1 minute before the bill was circulated would have gotten in, so I really don’t think having a grace period for people who were actually in the air in planes scheduled to land in the US would have been some sort of YUGE danger.
This was badly thought out– and even those who think blocking people from the 7 countries is a good idea out to realize that it was done in a really, really, totally, utterly stooooopid way. And that stupidity was both unnecessary and — likely– counter productive.
And Adler’s point is it could result in provisions that would otherwise be considered legal to be tossed out by the courts.
DeWitt
My reading is he things some or many provisions will fail judicial review because of how they were implemented — which matter at law. Had they been implemented in a non-haphazard, capricious way that indicated that alternatives were thought out, blocking people from 7 countries could be entirely legal.
lucia,
I think we agree. That’s basically what I was trying to say.
I know what I want to say, so when I read what I write, I think that’s what it says. Obviously, it’s less clear to others.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158174)
“Trump statement was hyperbole. But that’s Trump. Even the WaPo, however, admitted that the numbers indicate that there’s a problem.”
_________
DeWItt, if a religious group’s underrepresentation at the Syrian refugee camp indicates it has a problem, the Shia Muslims in the camp may have a greater problem than the Christians. As you know, I favor preference to emigrants based on their need to be removed from life-threatening harm rather than on the basis of their religion. However, if preference is to be based on a religion’s underrepresentation at the refugee camp, the Shia Muslims should receive preference along with the Christians. If preference means quotas, the Shia should get more slots because there are more of them.
Trump will just reissue the EO with updated language if it fails in the courts. It seems clear he has authority to do almost everything he wants to do here. He just needs better lawyers. The legal system is going to get a workout over the next 4 years.
Tom,
The legal system had a real workout these past four years:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/06/obama-has-lost-in-the-supreme-court-more-than-any-modern-president/
My bet- but I am an optimist- is that the Trump Administration will learn from its mistakes and actually improve its ability to craft EO’s, make other decisions, and especially craft legislation, that will withstand more than the time it takes his eventual successor to simply undo them. The challenge now is for team Trump to come together and make certain that any decision that is crafted in the future is done so wisely, and communicated wisely, in such a way as to make not only the intention, but the execution and basis in law very clear.
Max_OK,
The Christians are not in the camps because they are trapped in the towns and villages, or are kept out of the camps. Again, if you are able to think empathetically and not simply in a bigoted fashion, the Arab Christians are proportionately being slaughtered simply for being Christians. Shia, Sunni, Druse, are not so much. More Poles or Czechs were dying in WWII, but Jews were being selected disproportionately for killing.
Some of the arguments against helping the Jews then were not all that different from yours against helping Arab Christians today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abandonment_of_the_Jews
Max_OK,
Syria is a bit more complicated than that. The ~13% of Shiites in Syria are mostly Alawites who support Assad.
Even though Sunni’s are 74% of the population of Syria, they are the main opposition to Assad, whose support comes from the minority Alawite sect of Shia, ~11% of the total population and other religious minorities. Most of the fighting has been in heavily Sunni regions. As a result, as of late 2015, 93% of the 2,290 refugees admitted to the US were Sunni.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/facts-about-the-syrian-refugees/
If the Assad regime had fallen, however, I suspect the Alawites and other allies of the regime would be suffering.
Max_OK,
Sunnis have also been the main victims of ISIS, even though ISIS is supposed to be Sunni.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2016/11/23/isis-a-catastrophe-for-sunnis/
And then there’s this:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/302615-mosul-and-aleppo-are-trees-in-larger-forest-of-shia-sunni
j ferguson,
“There certainly isn’t any doubt that there is a global Islamist fundamentalist drive to expand control over governments of largely Muslim populations.”
.
Yes, but I think it is more that this. There is desire to institute Islam and Sharia everywhere, and eliminate other religious beliefs… by a range of means, some quite horrible, and that is the primary source of conflict. Even within Islam, no quarter is give to different sects… Shia think Sunni are apostates, and vice-versa. Which points to the fundamental problem with Islam: generally very little tolerance of other views and beliefs, and zero tolerance for free choice by Muslims… most places a Muslim is never allowed to leave Islam. That way lies holocaust.
Mike R,
“Read more, sneer less.”
.
No, you have the progressive credo backwards, it’s “Sneer more, read less.” And I might add, “Always be a jerk”.
hunter (Comment #158199)
January 29th, 2017 at 3:19 pm
Max_OK,
“The Christians are not in the camps because they are trapped in the towns and villages, or are kept out of the camps. Again, if you are able to think empathetically and not simply in a bigoted fashion, the Arab Christians are proportionately being slaughtered simply for being Christians.
________
In Moslem-dominated countries throughout the world, Christians are persecuted, and in some severely persecuted, robbed, raped, beaten, murdered. The U.S. and other nations should have, and always should have had, policies that made emigration easy for Christians who wanted to leave these places.
The subject of my comments in previous post was U.S. emigration policy for refugees from the Syrian civil war. Some posters advocating giving emigration preference to Christian refugees because so far the number coming to the U.S. was disproportionately small and an indication Christians who wanted to emigrate faced greater obstacles than Moslems who wanted to emigrate. Obstacles may not be the only reason so few Christians have emigrated, but regardless, U.S. policy should be to remove or ease impediments for any refugees who want to leave but are having trouble getting out.
But should policy give preference to emigrants based solely on their religion? I don’t think so. Preference should be based on the individuals’s vulnerability to harm, regardless of whether he or she is Christian. Wouldn’t it be un-Christian to do otherwise?
Yet another sign of the moral bankruptcy of Islam. Why haven’t the “rich” countries in the Muslim world jumped at the chance to help these refugees? As SteveF points out, these are countries where bigotry extends not just to Christians and Jews (even though they suffer disproportionately) but simply to Muslims who don’t agree with the dominant form of Islam in that country. How anyone can say the “Islam is a religion of peace” is beyond me. Worse, criticizing the government or multitudes of minor “sins” are harshly punished.
Obama and Bush both suffered from this prejudice regarding Islam. I personally like the fact that our new leaders seem less deluded about it.
Max, The other issue of course is which refugees are likely to accept our values and help us in the future. We have no obligation to take refugees like the Somalians many of whom wish us harm, want to impose Sharia law, etc. Let others help these no doubt pathetic people. Like perhaps Saudi Arabia for example. They don’t of course because charity is not a strong doctrinal element of Islam. Conquest and submission by everyone else is the dominant theme.
Lucia,
Podhoretz adds background on this. It was intended to be a “Muslim ban” as Trump consulted Giuliani but then the people that tried to put it together came up with the seven nation test as a face-saver.
This kind of incompetence where the people who have to carry out policy are not consulted is probably why Trump businesses have gone bankrupt six times.
I would agree that Trump is actually a failed businessman as witnessed by bankrupticies and he succeeds a failed community organizor as President. Both have resorted to Executive Orders in attempts to do push through their programs. Is there a better point being made for us here than that we need to severely limit executive power in our government and then proceed in limiting the power of the congressional clowns.
RB, I think Podhoretz is simply wrong about “vetted” refugees. There are lots of examples of terrorists and criminals slipping through. Under Obama there were two from Iraq who were settled in Kentucky and caused a 6 month pause in Iraqi admissions. There are plenty of vetted refugees in Germany who have committed a lot of violent acts. Perhaps not terrorism yet, but gang rape is pretty serious.
Podhoretz also tries to make the case perhaps that these 7 counties have not been problems in the past. That’s not true but perhaps other countries such as Saudi Arabia should be on the list too. The 9/11 terrorists were visitors from that country.
Be careful here to vet the source. There are still a lot of “Never Trumpers” especially among the conservative intellectual class. Their hatred of Trump is visceral and their self-righteousness palpable. Their vitriol during the election was quite stupid and not based on policy at all but on personal style more than anything else. Just as Teddy Roosevelt frightened the ruling elites in his own party, Trump has lots of enemies. George Will is another person who hates Trump and is just virtually unreadable for that reason.
I personally am thrilled that Trump is clearly going to shake things up in Washington and clean house in the executive branch. Already the top leadership at State has been asked to step aside. That’s a great move and bodes well for Tillerson’s tenure.
You guys are tough. Failed businessman huh. He ranks someplace in the top thousand richest people in this world of seven billion we live in, but he’s a failed businessman.
Whatever.
Lucia, I am a little surprised by some of the stories being circulated in the media. However, Preibus was on TV this morning saying that this will not affect green card holders going forward and that those detained were detained based on customs agents enforcement discretion. If that’s true, this whole story is a big nothing and an example of media bias. In the interview, it was clear that F Chuck Todd was doing his best to spread falsehoods by literally talking over Preibus and simply not listening.
I’ll take this more seriously when I find out who some of these 100 or so people are who were detained and why they were detained. One of them was released and gave an interview saying he liked Trump.
As I recall Carter’s travel ban for Iranians did extend to those on student visas. That may have been an extreme situation, but one could argue that the countries at issue here mostly don’t have any effective government and are out of control.
David Young,
TR presided over the beginning of the American Empire. I wouldn’t consider him a shining example.
The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire
Trust busting was also over rated.
mark bofill (Comment #158211)
January 29th, 2017 at 7:18 pm
You guys are tough. Failed businessman huh. He ranks someplace in the top thousand richest people in this world of seven billion we live in, but he’s a failed businessman.
Whatever.
Mark, I would think that a businessman would be judged by how well his businesses fared. A con man, on the other hand might well be judged on how much money he fleeced. In my mind, and perhaps even in the back of the minds of their supporters both Obama and Trump could pass for con men and I am a bit surprised by the refusal of many to acknowledge that the king has no clothes. If it makes you feel any better, Obama is superior to Trump in conning.
Kenneth,
Maybe you’re right. Thanks.
David
Evidently the administraiton is their initial screw up in the executive order as written and sent out to be enforced. But the phrase going forward is key yere. In the future— i.e. “going forward”, they will not apply it to greencard holders. But that doesn’t change the fact that as written the original order sent to customs had no exception for green card holders. Customs was told to stop everyone. And they did what they were told.
The order sure as heck reads as instructions for the customs agent to stop everyone from seven countries. STAT. That the customs didn’t chose to ignore it might be called “discretion” by Preibus. But I think few agents would have been willing to risk putting their jobs on the line to ignore the wording of an executive order.
Whether it’s true depends on what the word “true” means.
But the notion the initial reporting is media bias is nonesense. The fact that the media report the content of the order and how it was received and enforced is not “bias”. (BTW: the text of the order is available.)
This seems to merely be your reaction. I don’t know what it is about the interview that makes it “clear” that Todd is spreading falsehoods.
It’s pretty much going to be who hit the airports just after the order came through. At least one is a person who worked as a translator for the military. The others: don’t know. But for the most part it’s going to be people who were unlucky enough to be in flight when the order hit customs.
What Carter did is irrelevant to the fact that this was done in a slipshod way. Whether these countries are out of control is equally irrelevant. The fact is: This was done in a slipshod way. This is true whether you like the idea of blocking these people an implementing extreme vetting or not.
That they are changing some policies almost immediately only emphasizes the slip-shod nature of the act. Trump and his people should have thought through what to do with green card holders before writing the EO, having Trump sign it and send it to customs.
You know, this isn’t like a hotel where if something goes wrong they can give you a complementary dinner, perhaps a credit on your bill and everything is ok. You really do need to be careful Executive Orders before they hit the street. Not send them out and then say “Oh. Whoops. I missed that details. I”ll just adjust that!” and then hope people say, “Oh. Ok. That’s ok then.”
Lucia, I agree the implementation details could have been better thought out. I would argue its a relatively small inconvenience for a very small number of people. In all honesty, I don’t personally care very much about these details. I’m far more concerned about Islam as the potential cause of a far larger confrontation/conflagration in the West and/or in Israel. Neither Bush nor Obama saw the issue very clearly. The evidence that Islam is a dangerous ideology of violence and intolerance is very strong.
Apparently, of the 100+ initially detained, all but 24 were released rather quickly.
David
They were complete crap.
You can argue that all you want, but the craptastic nature of this implementation is resulting in at least 4 court cases– with ruling disfavorable to the administration. There are taxi strikes at airports. There is a huge opportunity for collective demonstration which is occurring.
The result of the craptastic nature will increase the likelihood of disfavorable rulings.
They should never have been detained at all. There should have been a grace periods especially if you think this sort of program blocking people ought to be implemented. Had there been one, this new order would have occupied a 12 hour news cycle before the next news cycle. As it stands, the court cases, protests, out-cry of various sorts are going to be very loud for a long time.
And I can tell you that the “middle” who voted for Trump mostly because he wasn’t Hillary are not going to be enchanted by statements like “relatively small inconvenience for a very small number of people” and so on.
This. Was. Dumb. And it was very badly done.
DeWitt, There is a modern distaste for Roosevelt’s pugnacious streak. Like Churchill, he was a man of action. It is a little disingenuous to argue that Roosevelt was not a great President. He transformed the role of the Federal government both in terms of the economy but in terms of National Parks and Forests.
And he was truly beloved by common people of all persuasions because of his outgoing personality and ability to talk with people on virtually any subject with intelligence.
Like Trump he was a nationalist and believed in a common American culture, language, and politics.
Lucia, OK, you have made a strong case. I happen to disagree but we will have to agree to disagree. Further I don’t think this will really hurt Trump in any way. By the time this gets through the courts, the 90 days will be gone anyway.
David Young,
There is a potential upside to this quick foray into ridiculous incompetence. With some luck, Trump will inspire a bi-partisan bill to reduce excess power of the executive permanently, it will pass quickly with veto-proof majorities.
lucia, I criticized this move pretty harshly, but I think it will pass quickly. But we’ll see pretty soon. The heart of what was done was not unconstitutional. It was simply done without enough planning and consideration. That failing is shared by all Presidents from time to time and is not likely to be legislated away.
I agree with Hunter. Legislation is very unlikely in the House with a veto proof majority.
JD Ohio (Comment #158100) “I want to make clear that I don’t have problems with the treatment per se.”
Very glad you were OK and no serious problems.
–
mark bofill (Comment #158094)
” Why do that.” He does not like Trump?
–
Max_OK (Comment #158145)
“Tom, what I can’t accept is the notion any Christian in Syria is more likely to be killed by violence than any Muslim in Syria.”
–
. It is a true comment but meaningless. Muslims and Americans are killing half a million Muslims in Mosul as we write. It well take a long time to find that many Christians in Iran because they have either been killed in the past or converted on pain of death.
–
Apropos all comments here, each religion, cult or political party on it’s own is capable of being quite benign.
It is not religions [ideas] who kill people, it is religious [idealistic] people who kill people.
Skeptikal science has provided an amusing example of how politics, for instance, can be fun in the past.
Although I would contend the reaction to this has been hysterical, Trump knows he has a huge pack of rabid zombies sitting outside the WH ready to pounce at a moments notice. Antagonizing the press and then handing them this gift has a predictable outcome.
David Young (Comment #158207)
January 29th, 2017 at 6:12 pm
Max, The other issue of course is which refugees are likely to accept our values and help us in the future. We have no obligation to take refugees like the Somalians many of whom wish us harm, want to impose Sharia law, etc. Let others help these no doubt pathetic people…
__________
David, I thought we were helping Syrian war refugees become immigrants solely for humanitarian reasons, but if not, I say help only those who can be most helpful to us, meaning those who are working age and have money, education, and skills. We are, however,supposed to be accepting refugees primarily to help them rather than for our own benefit.
I wasn’t aware of the problem with Somalian immigrants. Foreigners can have trouble at first changing their old ways and adjusting to life in America.This is nothing new. It has happened throughout our nation’s history. The Irish immigrants of the 19th Century are a good example.
The Irish came to America with a lot of bad habits. The men were little better than savages and liked nothing better than getting drunk and brawling. Their reputation for laziness and poor work habits was so bad employers put up signs saying NO IRISH NEEDED. Irish women were reckless breeders and prepared food that was both boring and unsanitary. One even caused a major typhoid epidemic.
Before coming here the Irish had already caused trouble in England.
In 1836 Benjamin Disraeli wrote:
“[The Irish] hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.â€
https://books.google.com/books?id=BmB4jYrsiQoC&pg=PT153#v=onepage&q&f=false
But the Irish gradually improved and today are some of Americans finest citizens. I’m optimistic about the Somalians doing the same.
BTW, I’m not Irish.
Max_OK
I’m roughly 50%-75% Irish. 0% Swedish.
Oh.. FWIW: Popsie-Wopsies Father’s great-grandfather immigrated because he was a “hedgerow teacher”. He was caught and realized he’d better flee the country. He was in the minority of Irish who could read when he got here.
I saw news reports that some TSA thugs were ignoring the federal court injunction and even trying to seize green cards.
The idea that since only a relatively few people were affected, it’s not really a problem is disgusting to me.
in 2003 I worked on a project that was supported by a company team from the UK. They performed System Safety Analysis which was a process in which every component and activity in a transportation system was discovered, failure modes identified and consequences of failure appraised.
This team flew in to US monthly stayed two weeks for discussions with client and coordination with rest of project team and then flew home.
One team-member was turned around at Dulles and sent back to the UK. It took some effort to discover the reason. He was born in Iran. He was Bahai and had left with his family in the ’60s when his co-religionists were being persecuted. He had never been back.
We discovered that the decision to send him back was made at a fairly low level, could not be practically appealed on the spot and ultimately required tens of thousands of dollars in legal expense to get him re-admitted.
I write this because I’m not at all surprised at reports that immigration people may be erring on the side of caution – as they see it. Nothing new.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158214)
January 29th, 2017 at 7:38 pm
David Young,
TR presided over the beginning of the American Empire. I wouldn’t consider him a shining example.
DeWitt, that quote in your post is something with which I agree whole heartedly. The cycle of looking for an enemy around which to unite, the carnage and unintended consequences and then the loss of interest by the general public is something that cannot be missed by any astute observer of the US foreign involvement and particularly in the past few decades.
T. Roosevelt and his cousin F. Roosevelt did much to increase the reach of the federal government and while most of the historians find this a good development and in many accounts, heroic, those of a limited government persuasion do not.
A recent example of the uniting against an enemy is the recent change of heart by the Democrats and mainstream media on Putin. While his persona and actions did not changed that much we went from a reset with Putin (and the off mic comment from Obama to Putin about negotiating after Obama got reelected) to his being the evil incarnate – when that became convenient.
j ferguson,
The problem for the immigration people on the ground is that as far as they can tell, they are carrying out orders. And as long as the orders are lawful, its their job to carry them out. They aren’t supposed to decide if the order is a good idea, whether they like it or not and so on.
We had an issue with an invited speaker at PNNL; he was scheduled to speak in a large room in a slightly access control building. He was Canadian but had been born in India or Pakistan– don’t remember which. He’d moved to Canada when he was something like 4 days old; grew up there, naturalized.
But in our security process, people born in whichever country needed a longer time process for “vetting”. That would have been find, but our functionaries in security who had been given the papers early enough had let them sit because he was Canadian. Then, they got to it in what they considered “due” time (which was the minimum to clear a Canadian born in Canada– and not very long) and suddenly “discovered” he was born in a country that would require weeks to “clear” to get in the building where he was going to speak.
So the colleague who invited him had to scramble around on something like 4 days notice finding a different building for him to speak in, and all meetings were at a local diner. On the one hand it worked out. But … the commotion.
Naturally, there was much discussion that many of us (including me) would fall under this rule were we not American citizens. (The list is long–born in El Salvador was on it.)
The problem of course, was that once the papers requesting the day long clearance had been left in the pile, the person processing it did not have discretion to say, “Oh. Well… My mistake. Plus the guy lived in CA pretty much his whole life…” We couldn’t “sneak” him in either.
Lucia: “Trump and his people should have thought through what to do with green card holders before writing the EO, having Trump sign it and send it to customs.”
.
I agree with most of Lucia’s criticisms of Executive Order. But I suspect that Trump’s people did think it through and the faults are deliberate.
.
The Executive Order has a provision for letting in people from the affected countries on a case-by-case basis, so there is a way to let in green card holders, people who worked our military, etc. So I think the only evidence that the EO was drafted incompetently is that it could have been done with a lot less drama.
.
You may have noticed that Trump likes drama. The people who are protesting would be protesting no matter how carefully the order was drafted. Maybe the protests would be less frenzied in that case, but the more frenzied the protests the better for Trump. If Trump’s opponents don’t learn to pick their battles, Trump will win.
.
In the minds of most people, allowing a grace period would have amounted to saying “we will let terrorists in, provided that the Obama administration gave them visas”. Trump’s lack of concern with the inconvenience (or worse) a few foreigners is completely consistent with America First. Most people will have no trouble with Trump’s action and will shake their heads in amazement at the protests. So the “badly drafted” order strengthens Trump’s position and weakens his opponents.
Are people in battleground states more likely or less likely to vote Trump after this? The incompetence part will likely blow over as it did with the ACA roll-out.
.
I would argue that since future terror attacks by immigrants are very likely before 2020 comes along, this hyperventilating about “immigrant rights” may very well be short term gain but a long term loss. If there aren’t any terror attacks this also works in Trump’s favor. Both sides very much care about terrorism.
.
The politicians need to be pretty careful and not say things that can look bad later. Canada’s Trudeau scored points by saying he will accept US refugee rejects only to see an immigrant terror attack a day later (although this was a Moroccan shooting up a mosque yelling Allahu akbar! so it is a bit confusing what is going on there).
Lucia: “The problem for the immigration people on the ground is that as far as they can tell, they are carrying out orders. And as long as the orders are lawful, its their job to carry them out. They aren’t supposed to decide if the order is a good idea, whether they like it or not and so on.”
.
Well, yes, but sometimes the problem is the immigration agents.
I used to live in Canada. After Sept. 11, the U.S. decided to start requiring passports for U.S. citizens entering from Canada. A few months before that went into effect I made a trip to the U.S. and neglected to take my passport. The Customs people gave me a hell of a hard time, even after I pointed out that the requirement had not yet gone into effect and they admitted that I was right about that. They did eventually let me through.
Hi Lucia,
In 1992 we had another brush with security. We were working on a tangential part of a project which required installation of and ‘make to work’ a complex cad system including an electrostatic plotter on a site where secret stuff was underway. We had to submit our credentials. I had had clearances in the past but they went away with the projects which secured them.
Our most inventive tech was a Lebanese EE. We submitted his credentials and he was rejected. We were told that the problem was not that he was Lebanese but that he’d been home within the last seven years. But this was 1992.
Mike M
Yes. Moderate voters are going to get tired of this.
Not most of them. The fact that people were being held almost certainly made a difference to many people who are not in the “semi-professional protestor” demographic.
Nonesense.
A 12 hour grace period to allow people already on board aircraft to land and clear is not merely “provided the Obama administration gave them visas”. People given visas by Obama but on board aircraft when the order came through would have been blocked. This grace period would have affected roughly 100 people at most.
A grace period that adds “provided they have green cards” also wouldn’t be merely “provided the Obama administration gave them visas”. . Some– probably many– green card holders have been here since before Obama and got their green cards under Bush. Some were merely on business travel. Giving them a grace period to book flights and get home so they aren’t trapped for X days would be helpful. Most could comfortably stay here for the 90 -120 days (or whatever it is) periods in which this “vetting” program is put in place.
Presumably, the “vetting” will just make green card holders have to file something to get re-entry every time they want to come re-enter. That will be an danged inconvenience, but if one can file before leaving, not a yuge one and could be potentially justified on the basis of wanting to impeded and/or track people leaving to go to “terrorist training” camps.
Mike M
Sure. But in this case, stopping people was in the order. Denying entry to those with green cards was in the order.
I don’t know what is normally done with respect to customs holding papers (like green cards or passports) while someone is detained. Nor what is normally allowed with respect to allowing those detained to have visitors pass out. It’s possible some immigration boots-on-the-ground used their discretion to be heavier than ordered. But the main problem was that detaining these people was what was ordered.
Immigration furor now has a 24 hour lifetime, Trump nominates Supreme Court tomorrow. This will of course be “the world’s worst person ever ™”.
.
The left is going to reject this guy even if it was Obama. They aren’t real happy about the right running out the clock after Scalia died, and who could blame them?
.
The first guy is known to be a sacrificial lamb, so I would setup a second guy as the actual one that is desired. If they reject him, then nuke the filibuster and noone will shed a tear.
Tom Scharf,
Yes. The left is going to criticize and ‘reject’ the SCOTUS nominee.
I don’t blame them for being grumpy that Congress denied Obama his judge– and even wouldn’t give him a hearing. But the appointment to the supreme court is a political process and was designed that way. Works in both directions.
I don’t think so. I think Sotomoyor was Obaman’s first pick. She’s on.
Unless there is actually something wrong with him, I think he’ll probably appointed. By ‘something wrong’, I mean “smoked weed in college”, “hired illegal alien nanny” or “got arrested for something” and so on. Not “the left doesn’t like his politics.” It might be noisy, but DEMs know they aren’t going to get anyone “better” from their POV.
I’m waiting to see if they break the Catholic/Jewish hegemony of the bench. 🙂
Angech,
Well, kind of but mostly no. Beliefs do really matter. Russell’s History of Western Philosophy is good reading if you want to consider the alternative view.
It well take a long time to find that many Christians in Iran because they have either been killed in the past or converted on pain of death.
.
If you look, you will find that the name Iranians call Christians is Armeni or Armenian. The reason they call them that is because during the Turkish genocide of Armenians, who are largely Christian, the Armenians who could, fled to Iran for safety. The Perians took them in, and they still have churches and practice Christianity. Evidently the historical Christianity has taken place in Persia since the time of Christ ( the Magi were Persian, after all ).
.
Iran being on this list is a little confusing, because al Qaida and ISIS are distinctly Sunni and of course, Iran is Shia. ISIS considers the Shia apostate and subject to death, far worse than Christianity ( by the Quran, only subject to high taxes ). So in this regard, Iran and the US are in opposition to ISIS.
.
I tend to regard all religions as silly superstitions that in this modern scientific age, I thought we would have outgrown by now. But there don’t appear to be any signs of that.
TE, The Shia have their own terrorist organizations such as Hezbola. I have not seen anything reliable out of Iran in a long time. There is no way to know how Christians are being treated. We know that generally they have virtually been exterminated or driven out from most Muslim countries.
An exception is Egypt where Coptic Christians are a substantial minority. They are persecuted and discriminated against according to a friend of mine who lived in Egypt for several years.
Hmm. I also have a Christian friend living in Cairo:
Granted, I haven’t really been in touch since before the ‘Arab Spring’ beyond exchanging a sentence or two on Facebook, but back then it wasn’t his sense that Coptics were persecuted.
I guess individual mileage varies.
[Edit: you know, I’ll check in with him and report back. Maybe I’ve misunderstood him.]
That is true, and no doubt the reason they’re on the list, though they seem to be motivated at protecting and fostering the Alawite and Shia minorities in Syria and Lebanon.
.
Most of what I know is from speaking to Iranian students studying here. They point to the Christian churches as a matter of pride. They also point to the candles in the windows Iranians lit after 9/11.
.
Iran’s government is certainly a theocracy that has an interest in an enmity with the US ( nothing creates unity like a remote great satan ). To some extent they have reason to be suspicious of the US. The US, after all, removed the democratically elected leader of Iran and installed the Shah. How would we react if some foreign power took Trump out and made Obama a king for thirty years?
.
As for the numbers, do consider self selection. Most sane people that could leave Iran did leave during the Revolution. Iran is a theocracy, but not extremely effective. Nearly all the cultural events in Iran stem from ancient Perisa and Zoroastrian observance. These things are more or less forbidden but the government can’t enforce it because they are popular.
.
Also, reflect that many Christian ideas actually come from Persian and Zoroastrian religion, long before Christ or Islam, from the time the Jews were in Babylon.
.
The realities on the ground are always more complex and nuanced than the simplifications. There can’t be religious bigotry without religion.
lucia: “Moderate voters are going to get tired of this.”
I agree. Trump is obviously betting that when they do, they will blame the left. Given the last 20 months, I would not bet against Trump.
MIke M
Why would we? Real question. I think much of the left is loonie-toons. That said: I blame the taxi strike in NY or Trump. I blame the stupid hold ups of people with green cards on Trump, not “the left”.
The moderate people aren’t “Pro Trump” in the first place.
I didn’t say I’m betting against him. But this was a clusterf***. Too many of these and Trump will lose the control of the house in 2018.
So my friend in Cairo answers my question (would you say Christians are persecuted / discriminated against in Egypt:)
.
So I guess I had this wrong, David you had this right.
The right is going to get massacred in 2018, although probably keep the Senate due to the seats they are defending. This level of anti-Trump energy will make a difference in the vote. This is real anger. See Tea Party.
.
The wild card is if we have a significant international event that Trump miraculously handles well. If ISIS collapses under Trump, he will get credit.
.
Further Trump derangement could backfire. it there was an attempt on his life by a loony tune from the left, it will defuse a lot of anger, especially if it was successful.
Becoming very hard to keep track, but it looks like the customs and border patrol, whose union endorsed Trump, are flouting federal judge stay orders , potentially coercing detainees into signing away their legal status. Elsewhere there are reports that people from the banned countries in flight with terminated visas were denied admission and issued an automatic five year ban from trying to enter.
This is the beginning of the story, not the end of the story. It is in fact one week.
And now that the hysterical reactionary reporting is giving way to facts, it turns out that the move by Trump was done suddenly for a pretty god reason: Don’t tip off potential bad guys.
– That the numbers of people actually impacted by the suspension was quite small.
– That Obama suspended Iraqis from coming to the US for a full 6 months with no big outrage.
– That this is a 90 day suspension to review how to assure ourselves of adequate security. It is not a permanent ban.
Mid week last week was the relentless story about how the idea of illegals voting in the US was *baseless*. Then the Political Scientists who did the study spoke and that went away. Before that was the idea the Russians controlled the American election. Before that was the recount crisis. And etc.
While I think Mr. Trump will need to explain what he is doing more clearly- and certainly should have in this case- the pattern of reactionary media assigning the worst motives and intentions to this President and misrepresenting the facts and context is becoming tiresome.
TE,
So what. You don’t think that people would stop hating other people if religion suddenly vanished from the planet, do you? I certainly don’t. For a humorous take on that, see the two Go God, Go episodes of South Park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go
In the year 2546, no one believes in God. However, there are at least three different major atheist organizations that are at each other’s throats. It’s reminiscent of the situation in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the different factions seeking liberation of Judea from the Romans do more damage to each other than the Romans.
ucia (Comment #158233)
January 30th, 2017 at 6:58 am
Max_OK
BTW, I’m not Irish.
I’m roughly 50%-75% Irish. 0% Swedish.
Oh.. FWIW: Popsie-Wopsies Father’s great-grandfather immigrated because he was a “hedgerow teacherâ€. He was caught and realized he’d better flee the country. He was in the minority of Irish who could read when he got here.
________
Lucia, thank you for mentioning “hedgerow teacher.” I didn’t know what it meant, now after looking it up, I do.
My wife is one-half Irish, but she’s a good cook. I used to think I might have some Irish ancestors, but a DNA analysis (23 and me) showed they were Vikings who settled in England. Lucia, have you had your DNA tested?
Although the Irish were victims of Xenophobia in America, the government didn’t pass a law to keep them out like it did to the Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited all immigration of Chinese labor, and was not repealed until 1943.
The law was in response to nativist fear of yellow hordes filling America with a foreign culture and taking jobs from whites (many of whom were Irish), because the Asians would work for lower wages.
But attitudes change. Today the Chinese are regarded as model immigrants.
hunter
This is a pretty lame explanation. It doesn’t explain the main problems which include
(a) No 12 hour window for people already in flight
(b) no provision for green cards and
(c) no provision for letting in people who worked for the military.
A 12 hour window to cover people who were already in the air would not have “tipped off potential bad guys”. Provision for people with green cards would also not have done so. Provision for people in the military would also not have done so.
They could easily inform people to stop allowing boarding of those from the 7 countries instantly; that was sufficient for “not tipping off potential bad guys” in time to let the react and get on flights. But not dealing with the reality that people were in the air is just idiotic.
It isn’t “hysterical” to recognize that the “reason” given doesn’t match what was actually done.
It could have been zero. Had there been a 12 hour window to cover people already in flight it wouldn’t have include frail octagenarians in wheelchairs landing and creating great photo-ops for those criticizing the implemtation as dunderheaded.
If he keeps doing things in such an idiotic unconsidered manner, overlooking very simple things he could do to make a roll out smooth you are going to keep hearing criticism.
I’m not criticizing his motives or intentions. I’m also not misrepresenting facts. He did this is a very, very, very stooooopid way. Very small changes could have avoided the totally disorganized mess the roll out created. If this is his MO over time: he’s going to be criticized because he deserves it.
Max_OK,
No. My mom and sister have. My mom had all sorts of fanciful ideas that one side of her family whose last name was “Daily” were really French Hugenots who’d moved to Ireland to escape prosecution and whose name was a corruption of “Du Lait”. This story seemed implausible… but anyway, DNA analysis shows… uhmmm no. 🙂
For what it’s worth, my maiden name was Tiernan which is recognizably Irish. Great Grandpa (in the Fidel picture) is mentioned in this post:
https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/13jd/history.shtml
That family on that side moved into Law because of the “we can read, and the more recent Irish immigrants trust us” thing.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158272)
January 30th, 2017 at 2:05 pm
TE,
There can’t be religious bigotry without religion.
So what. You don’t think that people would stop hating other people if religion suddenly vanished from the planet, do you?
______
No, but there might be less hate, and it might be for more rational reasons.
I believe Religion can also be a good thing. It depends on the teachings.
Less hate? Nah. I think we hate because we are hypersocial animals. We rationalize it this way and that, but at the end of the day (generalizing of course) our social interactions are more important to us than any other factor. Well, at least much more important than we like to admit to ourselves.
Just my opinion. I think it’d be a lot of work to support this argument. 🙂
Max_OK,
I’m of the opinion that there’s something in the human psyche that wants to believe in the irrational. Remove religion and it will be replaced by something else. Some aspects of the green movement, for example, have the feel of religion.
Me and my wife did “23 and me” over Christmas and I can join Max_OK as being 15% British/Irish, which was quite shocking actually. This service is very well done.
.
1720 – Eastern European
1810 – Scandinavian and British/Irish
1870 – French/German – I disavow any Frenchness, ha ha.
.
My Dad had tracked the family back through Germany on both sides so it matched up pretty well. Since I voted for Trump I am probably a direct descendant of Hitler.
.
You can forward these DNA results to Promethease and for $5 learn a lot more speculative and scary things about your DNA that your insurance company would love to know.
Lucia (Comment #158276) 🙂
For what it’s worth, my maiden name was Tiernan which is recognizably Irish. Great Grandpa (in the Fidel picture) is mentioned in this post:
https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/13jd/history.shtml
_____
Yes, the linked piece says
“Originally, the new court house housed Supreme Court Justice Frank S. Gannon and the Surrogate’s Court Judge J. Harry Tiernan who acted also as a justice of the City Court.”
Most of my wife’s American Irish ancestors were police. She told me her great grandfather arrested Al Capone. I was skeptical until a relative showed me an old newspaper clipping. Yes, he did arrest Al Capone, but it was early in Capone’s career.
lucia, we are largely in agreement actually. I posted that this EO rookie mistakes. That the ICE and other relevant organs of the Federal govt. should have had input and coordination in the Execution. But the core action is probably going to be held to be lawful. And the hysteria and fury is not justified by the action itself.. Its execution is a different matter. And I also agree that if he does not get a smoother touch on the levers of power he could be a 1 term( or less?) President.
Max_OK,
Police is a good Irish job.
hunger
If government employees are defying court orders, he needs to instruct them to obey and send that instruction out fast. The executive branch or any part of the government violating the rule of law is unacceptable.
He also needs to clarify which parts of the EO remain in place– not stayed. Parts still are in place, and having some people think that enforcement of those parts is violating the rule of law is not good. Appearing to violate the rule of law is also not good.
OMG don’t correct that! Can I change my username? I want to be called hunger from now on! A perfect neo super villian nihilist existentialist name. I’m HUNGER, the little bro of Famine, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! 🙂
.
[Edit: Darn it! You corrected it! :p]
Must have done it while you were typing. . .
I’ll change it back. 🙂
Thanks!
I’m sorry, it’s obvious I’m *way* too easily amused. 🙂
mark bofill: “Less hate? Nah. I think we hate because we are hypersocial animals.”
DeWitt Payne: “I’m of the opinion that there’s something in the human psyche that wants to believe in the irrational. Remove religion and it will be replaced by something else. Some aspects of the green movement, for example, have the feel of religion.”
_______
In the Middle East Muslims are killing each other over what appears to me to be minor differences in religious beliefs. If they were all Sunni or all Shia, I doubt other kinds of group differences would result in as much killing. But who knows?
Yes, “Green” and ‘”vegetarian” are like religions in some ways but I think they can overlap or compliment other religions. I don’t see why a person can’t be a vegetarian Christian or a Green Christian or even a Green Vegetarian Christian.
Tom Scharf (Comment #158283)
You can forward these DNA results to Promethease and for $5 learn a lot more speculative and scary things about your DNA that your insurance company would love to know.
_____
Tom, thanks for that info. I’m conflicted on finding out more. I’m curious but sometimes I think the less I know the better. And I don’t mean just about my DNA.
Max,
The point here is that the Irish were Catholic and Christian. Despite their prejudices, which were very real, the were not devotees of a religion of hatred and domination.
There were very bad anti-draft riots that turned into race riots in New York City I think in 1863 in which large numbers of Blacks were killed. Mostly the rioters were Irish and troops fresh from Gettysburg had to be sent in.
But there is a difference between an ignorant and prejudiced Irishman and a Saudi Wahabist. The later believes in a dangerous ideology foreign to Western values.
> I thought we were helping Syrian war refugees become immigrants solely for humanitarian reasons,
There was an article with a refugee said they were considering going back(Somalia) because of Trump. This means they were likely not a refugee to begin with.
.
And don’t forget the church of global warming.
.
Environmentalism becomes a substitute religion for the modern secular, complete with: a god: Gaia, an affirmation of faith: “I believe in climate change!”, concepts of hell: RCP8.5, concepts of heaven: net zero CO2 and ritual sacrifice: carbon tax.
.
We’re probably evolved toward religious thought, so scrap traditional religion and you get environmentalism. Scrap environmentalism and you get… maybe we don’t want to find out.
Lucia and others, I would not write Trump off. Recall the just completed election campaign. There was pretty much nonstop Trump bashing in the mainstream media. Hillary had a billion dollars to spend and was the darling of the “establishment.” Many silly and ideologically purist conservatives opposed Trump. Yet Trump went directly to the people and won. If Trump creates jobs and makes other changes that improve people’s lives, none of this “stuff” will matter much.
Trump will appoint a SCOTUS justice who is an originalist and the right will be grateful for a long time. He has already gotten glowing endorsements from the Union leaders he met with and from lots of CEO’s. The politically correct snowflakes are about 20% of the electorate and out of touch. When they block airport access for passengers they look like street thugs.
TE and others, The problem here goes very deep in human nature. The stupid dogma of Rousseau of the “noble savage” is based on “feelings” as is most of Romanticism and its descendants down to the present day. The discovery that Chimps engage in warfare and can become merciless killers shocked many, but is entirely consistent with the dualistic nature of humanity and our closest relatives. Indeed nature itself has both dark and light sides. Any doctrine that ignores his dualism is dangerously wrong. If we don’t constantly struggle against our darker instincts, the darker instincts will prevail.
DeWitt,
“I’m of the opinion that there’s something in the human psyche that wants to believe in the irrational.”
.
Dawkins says the brain is pre-programmed to blindly believe what it is told for evolutionary reasons. When parents tell their child not to jump off cliffs, they blindly believe it without evidence and survive better. Dawkins states religion hijacks this feature/flaw of evolution.
.
Right. If anything that’s certainly the lesson from :
1. his candidacy to begin with.
2. the primaries ( no way he could get the nomination? )
3. the election ( no way he could actually win? )
.
He’s pretty shrewd, even if he won by using third grade vocabulary. Or maybe that was by design also.
.
The wall is a good example – lots of outrageous posturing but then a pronouncement from the Mexican leadership that they wouldn’t talk about it in public How good was that? Red meat for the base, but now he doesn’t have to do or say anything, because they agreed not to talk about it!
.
Lot’s of outrage on vetting and immigration, but it’s only a temporary situation.
.
It seems like Scott Adams is right and that with Trump, the extreme position just enables more flexibility of alternatives and even through all this, the press and public don’t seem to understand.
.
One thing that does trouble is the nationalism versus populism aspect. When people talk about nationalism I can’t help but think of the NFL Oakland Raiders, known as Raider Nation. The criteria for being a citizen of Raider Nation is easy and well understood: one must be a fan of the Oakland Raiders.
.
With nations of the world, things are not so clear cut. What constitutes a citizen of a nation? a resident? an ethnicity? a co-religionist? a co-linguist? Populism, as I understand it, often devolves into exclusion of some from the nation.
.
The constitution, of course from a time of much smaller population, declares that we don’t care about specific religion, or much else, as long as one adheres to the primacy of the constitution.
.
And that does bring up a fundamental issue. Islam, as directed by the holy book, the Quran, does not recognize the primacy of human law over Shariah. This probably has a lot to do with Islam rising as a political power simultaneously as a religious movement. Nevertheless, this conflict is fundamental and will not just disappear.
I think this conversation about the Muslim religion and the interpretations of it that allows non secular governments to severely restrict individual freedoms and mete out punishments against those who are merely carrying out individual actions that would be considered legal in even a semi free society needs to be kept straight from what terrorist use in attempts to justify theirs and as result how our policy should differentiate between them.
For the case of Muslim governments using religion to justify the restriction of individual liberties, we in the West find it more abhorrent because we have experienced in the past times the mixing of government with religion and the bad outcomes that has produced and have gotten past this stage – at least mainly when it comes to religion. The problem we have there is in attempting to keep separate the individuals in those nations with non secular governments and their views on things and the government itself. As a practical or moral matter it is not feasible for the US to attempt by force to make these nations adhere to our separation of religion and state. In fact that the Muslim religion proclaims a mix of state and religion makes this matter more complicated and perhaps intractable for that religion as it is currently practice. US interference and even interference short of military actions in these matters only makes matters worse because that interference is used by these governments to unite the populations around a common enemy. Obviously the populations of these non secular states are the key in driving for individual liberties for history tells us that these governments will not on their own change. We can and have influenced these populations by exposure to how others live and even how semi free governments operate. For this case we are better off setting an example than forcing the issue.
Radical Islamic terrorists are a separate issue even though a thorough and public condemnation by the Muslim religious and the non secular government leaders would perhaps have some effect on these terrorists and if not at least have a positive effect on how others view the Muslim religion vis a vis terrorism. Radical Islamic terrorist as we know can be home grown and I doubt very much that the neo con mantra of defeating them on foreign soil will work anymore than attempting to change Muslim governments minds by force. I would think that the KKK and how it lost its power to terrorize should contain lesson for us regarding the Radical Islamic version.
I do have to admit that I do not know how those born into and practicing the Muslim religion are going take a secular road to individual liberties without leaving their religion but I do think that it is going to happen just as it has with other religions where the need to separate religion and the state has become very apparent.
Kenneth, I completely agree with most of what you say. We cannot change the Middle East as Bush tried to do in Iraq. That was based on naive ideas.
The problem here is however not similar to the problem with the KKK. The KKK never had any lasting or cohesive ideology and certainly had no support in Christian tradition or scripture. Islam is unique among major religions in it’s Medieval and primitive ideas about mankind and governments.
I’m actually concerned that it may not be possible to “Reform Islam.” Judaism has some of the same problematic aspects but they vanished around the time of the Babylonian conquest. Judaism from that point forward was powerless on even a regional scale and was a permanent minority religion essentially everywhere. A reformed Islam would have to jettison a very large part of the scriptures and teachings of historical Islam. The problem here is similar to Lebanon’s historical problem. As long as it was majority Christian, it was the Switzerland of the Middle East. When Muslims became the vast majority it descended into chaos and became a typical Islamic hellhole. Given the unusually high level of ignorance and self-loathing in our educational system, there may be no will to face the truth and deal with it.
In my view, that was the most dangerous aspect of the Obama administration. Obama seemed to have a reverential attitude toward Islam and to dislike Western power and culture. To call Obama Christian in the traditional sense is misleading. And he has aided Islamic extremism by his inaction or hopelessly ineffective half measures. In fact, he has actively supported some of the worst offenders such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas and Fatah in the Levant.
Kenneth, Just to reiterate, separation of church and state is a native concept in Christianity. In Islam it is a foreign concept. Christianity’s ideology is conversion by persuasion. Islam’s ideology is conversion by conquest and threats. Failing to recognize that important distinction makes it impossible to understand what we are facing.
The regulatory repeal could be even larger than anticipated. Congress has started reviewing, and they discovered another quirk in the law. There is a timeframe during which Congress can repeal a regulation, whose vote cannot be filibustered, and government agencies are forbidden from reissuing anything whose repeal is passed. What they discovered is that agencies are required to issue a report to Congress for each regulation, and the starting point of the time window for repeal is from the point of receiving the report. If Obama admin forgot this detail…
Tom Scharf,
Dawkins, *sigh*. Spare me from militant atheists. He’s a character in the Go God Go South Park episodes I mentioned.
In the absence of the major religions, that blind acceptance will still exist and be hijacked. There is absolutely no guarantee that the irrational beliefs that replace religion will ensure utopia. The reverse is more likely. Look at macroeconomics. It’s dominated by people who totally ignore experience over theory.
I think I’m with DeWitt on this. I thought it was social, but the more I consider it the more I doubt it’s that simple.
According to CNN, DHS on Friday had decided to allow green card holders to be admitted. That decision was overruled by the WH.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-ban/
More on macroeconomics: The current craze in economic models are called Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models or DSGE for short. They’re based on a fundamental flaw, that there is such a thing as economic equilibrium in the incredibly complex economy. At least AOGCM’s have some basis in reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_stochastic_general_equilibrium
Just when you think the stupidity couldn’t get any worse, the acting Attorney General (Obama appointee) directs the Justice Dept. to not defend the Trump immigration order. Bad move (which will no doubt be cheered by the media). If a Trump supporter needs affirmation of how government is rigged by the elites, there it is. I’m beginning to not take those lectures on “Trump is a threat to democracy” very seriously.
.
This will likely be followed by Trump in turn overplaying his hand and ceremoniously telling the acting AG “you’re fired”. Of course she deserves to be fired but if Trump is wise, he will just wait her out and put Sessions into office ASAP.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158294)
January 30th, 2017 at 3:56 pm
Yes, “Green†and ‘â€vegetarian†are like religions in some ways
.
And don’t forget the church of global warming.
.
Environmentalism becomes a substitute religion for the modern secular, complete with: a god: Gaia, an affirmation of faith: “I believe in climate change!â€, concepts of hell: RCP8.5, concepts of heaven: net zero CO2 and ritual sacrifice: carbon tax.
_________
Eddie, given your highly elastic definition of religion, a person
can have multiple religions. Like the Pope, for example, you can be both an Environmentalist and a Roman Catholic at the same time. Having both religions seems like good insurance, because If you decide to become an agnostic, you still have one religion left.
DeWitt, I think this comment below is close to what the Austrian economists would say about these models.
David Young (Comment #158292)
The point here is that the Irish were Catholic and Christian. Despite their prejudices, which were very real, the were not devotees of a religion of hatred and domination.
_______
Didn’t the Roman Catholic Church believe everyone should be a Roman Catholic and try to impose the religion on others?
Weren’t battles fought between Christians who were Catholic and those who were not?
How can a judge rule against this order? Saying that a certain person must be admitted to the country, when it is an executive branch decision to be made.
DeWitt: “They’re based on a fundamental flaw, that there is such a thing as economic equilibrium in the incredibly complex economy.”
.
I agree. But is not that same flawed assumption responsible for the idea that free trade is always good for everyone?
Max, You are thinking of the 14th Century mostly. In any case, my point is simply that ideology matters a lot in defining/motivating/restraining human behavior. Christianity is fundamentally different than Islam and actually helped spawn modernity. Islam cannot coexist with modernity I would argue.
MikeN: ” Saying that a certain person must be admitted to the country, when it is an executive branch decision to be made.”
.
I think that if that person is a citizen, it is not an executive branch decision. At least one of the judges ruled, quite plausibly, that the same applies to a legal permanent resident. And, of course, if you are a “progressive” judge, then you might feel free to rule against anything you don’t like.
Max_OK: “Weren’t battles fought between Christians who were Catholic and those who were not?”
.
I suppose that you refer to the 30 Years War. Although that had largely Protestants on one side and Catholics on the other, it was more complicated than that. For instance, France was often on the Protestant side.
.
There have been lots of wars between Christians. As far as I can tell, few, if any, were solely about religion. More common was using religion to claim the moral high ground. It has been nearly 500 years since that went out of style.
Kenneth,
I saw that quote from 1987 Nobel Laureate Robert Solow today. It was in John Mauldin’s Thoughts from the Front LIne – Post-Real Economics newsletter from Monday. It inspired my post. It was followed by this quote:
Next week’s newsletter is probably going to be a full-throated evisceration of protectionism unless there’s a sudden change of heart by Republicans.
John McCain has come out against a Mexican border tax. I would say that puts it on the way to the emergency room, if not in intensive care. Only two more Republicans are needed to put it out of its misery.
Mike M.,
In a word, no.
While it’s possible that our free trade agreements are not optimal, they’re what we have. Dismantling them will be a total disaster.
Here’s another quote from the newsletter from John Mauldin I quoted from above:
That didn’t take long. She’s fired. Trump’s gonna Trump.
David Young (Comment #158315)
“Christianity is fundamentally different than Islam and actually helped spawn modernity. Islam cannot coexist with modernity I would argue.”
________
It is difficult for Islam to coexist with modernity, but it’s not doing so bad in Turkey where 99% of the population is Moslem and the government is secular. Turkey probably is more advanced today than America was in 1800. Christianity has evolved. Islam can evolve too.
Changes take time.
DeWitt: “John McCain has come out against a Mexican border tax. I would say that puts it on the way to the emergency room, if not in intensive care. Only two more Republicans are needed to put it out of its misery.”
.
Only if no Democrats back it. Many might. Bernie Sanders comes to mind.
.
DeWitt: “While it’s possible that our free trade agreements are not optimal, they’re what we have. Dismantling them will be a total disaster.”
.
There is room to make the agreements more nearly optimal without dismantling them. I agree that a mercantilist/protectionist policy would be a bad idea. But I don’t hear Trump advocating that. I hear him claiming that we have made bad deals and advocating that we make them better. He talks a tough game about tariif’s, but that is part of his negotiating style. I think (and hope) that what he is doing is pressuring our trade partners to renegotiate, knowing that they can afford a trade war even less than we can.
.
True free trade is a fantasy, except under very specialized conditions. That is why pacts like TPP end up being so complicated; true free trade would be very simple. But in pursuing the free trade fantasy, we agree to very bad deals and end up letting mercantilist countries, like China, take advantage of us. Our goal should be balanced trade, not free trade.
MikeN
At least 4 judges have granted stays against enforcing portions of the order. They do so by applying law.
Not entirely. The executive branch can’t set aside due process.
Max_OK: “It is difficult for Islam to coexist with modernity, but it’s not doing so bad in Turkey”
No, it wasn’t doing so bad in Turkey. But Turkey has been rapidly regressing.
Tom Scharf: “That didn’t take long. She’s fired.”
I guess you mean Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Good riddance. That is exactly what should happen to an Attorney General who refuses to defend the law.
Lucia: “Not entirely. The executive branch can’t set aside due process.”
….
It is a very interesting question (that I have not researched) whether foreigners or refugees have any rights before they set foot on American soil. I would assume Green Card Holders would have rights. (Or possibly people who were granted a visa) However, the whole point of the Guantanamo prison is to avoid giving full American rights to those imprisoned there.
JD
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158319)
Mike M.,
But is not that same flawed assumption responsible for the idea that free trade is always good for everyone?
DeWitt,
In a word, no.
While it’s possible that our free trade agreements are not optimal, they’re what we have. Dismantling them will be a total disaster.
_______
MikeM, free-trade is always good for the many, but sometimes not for the few.
I agree with DeWitt that dismantling our free-trade agreements would be bad. I don’t know how bad, but the benefit to a relatively small number of Americans could be more than offset by price increases that would lower the standard of living for most Americans.
JD
A bunch of them landed. That’s the problem. The entire legal issue would be much less interesting if he’s put a 12 hour delay to allow those in the air to clear while closing the door at foreign airports first. Then those people could have been prevented from getting on flights that were allowed to touch ground on runways that certainly appear to be in NY or LA and so on.
I know the stays might not turn into overruling the law. It’s an interesting question– provided you aren’t the person stuck on in limbo on ground that one might call “not USA” but which is clearly not under anyone else’s jurisdiction. Doubtless lawyers are going to have an interesting time arguing about the extent to which due process applies on the ‘entry’ side of the customs agents desk.
Yes. But Guantanamo is on an island where we occupy a strip. It’s not in just on the other side of the gate in NY.
It was foolish and sloppy of Trump to make this “interesting” legal question an dispute that is going to go to court.
Mike M. (Comment #158322)
“He talks a tough game about tariif’s, but that is part of his negotiating style. I think (and hope) that what he is doing is pressuring our trade partners to renegotiate, knowing that they can afford a trade war even less than we can.”
______
Trump’s talk may be making trading partners think he’s full of sh*t, and lacks the backing of Congress and the American public.
Even if a trade war hurts us less, it still hurts. I doubt Americans are asking to be hurt in a trade war.
I would agree that it’s quite likely some votes will be picked up for a border tax from the left, it fits the ideology from the Sanders groupies and they would love nothing more than to drive a wedge into the Republican party.
.
“I have been writing about the dangers of protectionism for 15 years as my number one concern for the future, and for it to potentially happen on a theoretically conservative watch is truly distressing”
.
Let’s see how were doing since 2001:
US Manufacturing Employment
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mfg1.jpg
.
Household Income By Quintile
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/census/household-incomes-growth-real-annotated.png
.
I also very much doubt that strongly worded letters from hedge fund managers are going to carry a lot of weight in this political debate. I think it is too little, too late at this point.
Lucia: “Yes. But Guantanamo is on an island where we occupy a strip. It’s not in just on the other side of the gate in NY.”
….
I would assume that different rules apply once you are on land in the US. Again, I haven’t researched this.
JD
JD Ohio,
My impression is “different rules on land” is being argued in court and is the basis for the stay. I don’t know what the final ruling is, but this is one of the reasons it was beyond dumb not to have a 12 hour (or so) window to clear people in the air. There is no benefit to Trump, the country, those detained or anyone for this issue to be argued and nailed down in court.
So suspending people coming from 7 very dangerous places for a 90 day or less review is not a Presidential power, while the former President ignoring the law on deporting millions of illegal aliens is ok.
I think this protest is largely the result of a lot of manipulation and outright lying by media/democrats and is starting to annoy.
hunter,
As far as I can tell (and I’m not a lawyer) that’s not the legal problem with the current EO. It seems legal for the President to suspend people from coming for 90 days or less. Almost no one says otherwise. (There are people who don’t like him to ban them, but that’s not the legal problem with the order.)
The legal problem is right people have once they reach American soil and also the rights of people who already have green cards. (Those with green cards who are on American soil fall in both categories.)
The EO did this in a very stupid way that created a categories of people who can at least make legal claims, who are going to be given the right to court, who may well win and who have names and faces.
No amount about whining about Obama’s letting illegal aliens in is going to make these people with names, faces and a right to due process magically disappear.
I see lawyer comments speculating that Giuliani’s comments about Trump’s muslim ban proposal might pose problems regarding intent of the EO.
RB,
We aren’t in a fantasy world where Obama got to direct immigration from these very same countries per his will and now Trump cannot. Trump may need to find better lawyers though.
.
The main thrust of preventing refugees / immigration from certain countries is not even questioned by anyone. Only 7 of 50 Muslim countries are on the list. If it gets struck down in the courts it will just get reissued an hour later by a hopefully competent lawyer who spent more than 10 minutes drafting it.
Did not think it would get so far.
Fingers crossed for another lucky 4 weeks.
Most appointees will be in then and Gavin might have to leave the ship.
I see Trumps appointments as pushing the boundaries of the Climate Change wars as hard and fast as possible.
Usually when my quadrella is coming in, last leg running, due to win 10000 dollars on a 50 cent bet the horse I want is leading into the straight and breaks a leg.
Or I wake up.
Please don’t let me wake up for another 4 weeks.
This is better than a Lee Child Jack Reacher novel and it keeps going.
Or, as the Queen song goes,
and another one bites the dust.
Remember Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
He had studied in Yemen and boarded the plane in Amsterdam posing as a refugee from Sudan – according to Wiki article.
His activities were known to the CIA as well as his POV. His father had reported him to a US agency office in Nigeria as hating the US and possibly intending to do something about it.
So here we have history of a ‘bad dude’ who actually seems to meet the criteria of who should be filtered out of the population traveling into the US.
And yet there is not a peep about him on the MSM which seems convinced that Trump and company have picked the wrong countries, that no known terrorist has emanated from any of them. This guy boarded the plane claiming to be a Sudanese refugee. Sudan?? One of seven?
He was Nigerian but had his travel recorded in his passport.
I thought at the time that his being granted a visa despite his presence on a CIA watch list (not the no-fly list) and his travel to an education experience in Yemen should have alerted the State Department that his one-way trip to US might not be in our best interest.
Maybe the failure to detect this guy and deny him entry was exemplary of sloppy operations. I thought if Janet Napolitano had been on the ball when she took office, she would have audited this entire activity for best practice and effectiveness. It looked like she didn’t. This seemed negligent at best.
So here we have the Trump gang trying to do this very thing, but clumsily and with overtones of religious preference.
The above doesn’t alter my opinion of Trump nor my expectation that his reign will be brief, but it does suggest that he needs to think more about how he and his associates describe their actions.
FWIW, i can also offer more plausible reasons why Mexico should participate in the cost of border sealing. Generally, Mexico should have an interest in closing down the drug traffic as well as the passage of possibly bad guys from south of their border and so should pitch in on the cost. AFAIK, this aspect of the thing hasn’t been broached.
ferguson, so you agree with the rationale for what President Trump did, but still want him removed from office. We are experiencing a level of well poisoning that is probably unprecedented in American history. You described a massive failure by Obama jet shoe bomber and never mentioned his name. Mr. Obama made multiple EO’s which while nicely presented were illegal on their face. Mr. Obama EO’s and his refusal to enforce law got Americans killed. Yet Trump, in imposing a 90 day review of immigration standards from 7 of the most dangerous countries in the world should be removed from office? Wake up. You have been, along with a lit if peopke, manipulated.
RB: “Giuliani’s comments … pose problems regarding intent of the EO.”
What rubbish. Intent is irrelevant since it can’t be determined. And there is nothing in Guiliani’s comments that would indicate that the EO is a “Muslim ban” or that there should be any issue with the EO, other than questionable drafting.
.
The dismissal of Yates makes me wonder if part of the problem with the poor drafting of the EO was non-cooperation from Obama people at the DoJ.
Hi Hunter,
My thought had been that Napolitano was negligent. Obama had no management experience and we suffered because of it. She did. She’d been governor of a state.
One would think that taking command of an organization would inspire you to find out what’s going on, to audit its activities. The new administration’s enquiry into the activities at the Department of Energy was just such an audit – to try to find out where things stood and what they were doing, and how they did it, NOT a witch-hunt to seek out the embedded climate fanatics.
So my point above is that maybe Trump is doing what Napolitano should have done.
I think I’m able to isolate my objections to Trump from the things he seems to be doing right. After all, maybe he’ll make the trains run on time.
And no, I don’t think it impossible for him to do worthy things as well as having them misrepresented in the press.
But I can reach my own conclusion about his stability without any help from anyone. I’ve seen and heard enough from him directly to be concerned about his mental state.
If it comes to having to remove this guy from office, I think we need to be extremely careful that the reasons are sound and do not misrepresent his actions. Not liking him is not a reason, although I suppose a lot of people think so. Not me.
j ferguson,
“The above doesn’t alter my opinion of Trump nor my expectation that his reign will be brief,…”
.
Can you define brief? 4 years, or less?
.
If you are suggesting less than 4 years (not consideing health problems, which could happen), then perhaps you would be interested in a friendly bet.
SteveF,
Health is the problem I see; mental. I recognize that the sort of affliction I think he has does not preclude intelligent, effective, well conceived actions. I suppose I should have added when I earlier suggested psychopathy that the condition did not prevent usefulness, or skill and innovation in dealing with issues confronted, but the risk is greatly increased likelihood of bizarre responses to sudden events.
.
This is where I see the hazard of our hero’s tour of duty. In responding to some surprise, he will react wildly inappropriately, well beyond the pale. This will lead congress to permanently move him beyond the pale.
.
Obviously I have no idea whether such a provocation will happen within 4 years, but if you limit your caveat to physical, not mental health, you’re on.
.
If he’s still in office at the end of this term, I buy dinner in Stuart.
The history of self-declared experts- some with actual psychiatric and psychology degrees- diagnosing anyone from a long distance is long and nearly completely proven to be incorrect.
So we now know:
– that the list of 7 nations the temporary ban was put on was a list the Obama Administration created.
– that any President has wide authority to decide if there are security issues to justify banning entry from specific countries. and that many Presidents, Mr. Obama included, have exercised that power.
– that major media has (deliberately?) significantly misrepresented the temporary ban
-that Mr. Obama after about 10 days out of office is egging on (at the least) protests and misrepresentations of Mr. Trump’s actions.
So I think we will soon see this latest bit of cynical hysteria mongering is going to go the way of the prior cynical fear mongerings by the left. What is goal of these repeated moves to manipulate people into not only disagreeing with a particular action, but to hit the streets in protest over what is now called “fake news”?
Hunter,
I agree with you that long-distance psychiatric analysis is very difficult. The difference here is that this guy appears frequently right in our very own living rooms and says things, and dwells on subjects, which seem bizarre at best. So long distance it isn’t.
I have no expertise in this area and only one exposure to anyone whose symptoms were at all like Trump’s. I suspect it possible that many here have never dealt with such a person on a day to day basis and so would not recognize the problem.
We can hope he doesn’t get any worse.
j ferguson,
So what is your considered diagnosis? I have dealt with people who have been clinically diagnosed with problems up to and including schizophrenia.
Sadly a very close person to me had to be involuntarily committed by way of family intervention. So your diagnosis of President Trump is very interesting.
hunter,
In what way did the major media significantly misrepresent the temporary ban? I ask because I haven’t seen this.
hunter,
I cannot put a name to it but i will try (later) to assemble a list of the symptoms which I suppose revealing.
I believe that it is possible to be constructively functional while impaired in a very specific way but because of the impairment carry a risk of occasional misbehavior under some variety of provocation.
It’s ok if you think I’m winging it. I am.
j ferguson,
Trump’s behavior does indeed seem bizarre, when judged by the normal behavior of politicians. But I do not regard the normal behavior of politicians as a particularly useful standard of mental health.
– the lawfulness of the EO
– the scope of the impact of the EO
– the number of people adversely impacted by the EO
– that the greencard / existing visa issue is
a) minor in terms of actual people
b) largely already resolved
– the context of the EO
– the historical precedents of the EO
– the likely motives of the silicon valley opposition to the EO
(since they are assigning motives to the Trump Administration)
For starters.
Think on this: We are accepting the idea that the controlling interest in Amazon, which seeks to profit directly by way of immigration under their terms, is also controlling one of the major media outlets where he has been shown to using “fake news” to blast Trump.
hunter,
the population affected by the EO is apparently much greater than 109 – more like 90,000. Source is Washington Post so you can discount it if you’d like.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/30/the-number-of-people-affected-by-trumps-travel-ban-about-90000/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_factchecker-645a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e71a58c724f9
lucia,
Two words: “Muslim ban”.
.
The order was very specifically written to avoid this, but the media calls it this anyway. Even if one grants that it effectively bans more Muslims than other religions, disparate impact, that is correlation not causation.
.
Trump has used the words Muslim ban, but he’s clearly interested in terrorism. If the Buddhists were committing all the terrorism, would Trump still go after Muslims countries now?
.
The media could call everything Obama has done a “War on Muslims”. Countries Obama bombed in 2016: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Any correlations here? Is Obama going after terrorists or Muslims?
.
The Intercept called Trump’s order “If We Bombed You, We Ban You” ha ha.
.
It is just another case of giving a charitable interpretation to one person and revoking it from another. It’s nakedly partisan. Business as usual.
Tom Scharf,
Uhhmmm… I don’t consider that “(deliberately?) significantly misrepresented”.
The term is misleading– as most shorthand terms are– since it would make it seem both broader and narrower than it is– it also bans Syrian Christians, and it doesn’t ban Indian Muslims. But really, those to whom it applies are predominantly muslim and everyone knows the ‘target’ is islamic terrorism. So it is hardly a significant misrepresentation. It’s just not the representation or spin you happen to like”.
But here, we also have more evidence of incompetence by Trump and his people who should have given it a name they would be using, like “our seven-nation hold.” If you don’t give a name to your own action, someone else will. It may have a spin you don’t like.
Nonesense. It was specifically written to ban mostly muslims by means other than saying they are muslims.
.
They misrepresent because they neglect or demphasize the temporary aspect.
.
They misrepresent because they neglect the recent example ( Obama banned Iraqi immigration for 6 months at the start of his administration and as noted by Trump admin, the countries of the ban are in fact ones the Obama admin designated as terrorist states ).
.
The media is poor of course, at historical context. Here is a list from BI worth reviewing.
.
Of course, the WSJ pointed out that of the suspected terrorists who either completed, or were arrested before completion of terrorist acts, most were US citizens. So if we’re having a ban, it would most logically be of Americans. Welcome police state.
hunter,
With all due respect, I haven’t seen the major media misrepresenting the overall legality of the EO, nor its scope and impact and so on nor any of those other things.
Certainly, you can’t object to the fact that when the EO was sent out the media reported that it had no exception for green card holders who were equally held up at airports as others. After all: that was entirely true.
And FWIW: given that this provision affected many green card holders who effectively could not travel for 90 days, this is not a ‘minor’ number of people. They just didn’t happen to be trapped in airports or away from home.
That Trump’s admin corrected this c*ckup afterwards doesn’t mean the media was mis-representing that aspect of the EO when it came out. And it doesn’t mean the media was mis-representing when they discussed the dubious legality of that provision– and the legality if such a provision is dubious. At the time the media reported the provision limiting green card holders was real, affected lots of people and its legality may be… tenuous. (We don’t know on the latter. It might be ok too.)
Presumably you can’t be objecting to the media reporting that the EO contained no provision for people who were in flight when it arrived and got held up in airports. Since this was also true. And presumably can’t think they were “misrepresenting” when they discussed the dubious legality of that provision since it was of dubious legality which is why the provision has been stayed pending further court discussion.
On the day of the rollout the EO did contain provisions of dubious legality which is why a number of provisions have been stayed. Immediate media coverage when the provisions are announced and in place and affecting people of this is not “misleading” and doesn’t become so if Trump administration later corrects their error.
I get that these might be “minor” provisions that don’t affect the main thrust of the EO. But reporting them is not “misrepresenting”.
It’s true there are people who misunderstand the document that was put out. That’s hardly surprising. But that’s not the major media misrepresenting the document.
Really: I get that some people like this EO and they would rather not focus on those things that were f***ed up in it’s incompetent roll out. But that doesn’t turn media accurately discussing the provisions into “media misrepresetation”. Not even if some people who read the reports quickly or hear about it on the grape-vine don’t catch all the nuances.
Mike M
According to reports, DoJ employees who worked on the EO were asked to do so without the knowledge of their superiors and were asked to sign NDAs. I doubt they were Obama people. Further, this is probably not how “checks and balances” are going to help us from Trump’s worst tendencies. Employees serving two bosses while signing NDAs and Cabinet appointees who learn about EOs from the TV are not going to be able to help.
WaPo has misrepresented nearly every aspect of Mr. Trump. They have cried wolf far too many times.
That 90,000 number is as suspect as the source.
One of Bezos’ favorite deceptions is to mix numbers and factoids and parse them to fabricate more of the fake news he specializes in.
Now if there are 90,000 in the “pipeline” who may be delayed for the review period, so what?
It was OK for Mr. Obama to delay all Iraqis for 6 months.
And the argument that our translators etc. are at risk that is a legacy problem and at least now there is a commitment to resolve it in 90 days, unlike “never” under the prior Administration.
That said, early on I stated here and elsewhere that this is *Trump’s problem*, that he did not roll it out well or sell it well. However that is completely separate from it’s legality. After all, his predecessor rolled out EO’s that were widely hailed and not widely protested that have turned out to be unlawful in Court. Two different issues. The latter demonstrates character, the former is a rookie mistake that can be learned from.
Correction: they were Hill staffers . Still, congressional employees, I imagine ought to be different from Trump campaign employees in that it doesn’t seem right that they sign NDAs.
RB,
I will bet that NDA’s are very common in dealing with sensitive security issues.
It will not be surprising at all to find out that once again we are being manipulated, cynically, by major media.
Keep America safe for the oligarchy!
Most Americans don’t know immigration policy from a coloring book, yet they somehow get profoundly righteous about it.
Andrew
Obama directly killed 30,000 almost exclusively Muslims. Bush directly killed 35,000 almost exclusively Muslims. 450,000 almost exclusively Muslims have died in Syria since Obama took office. 100,000 almost exclusively Muslims died in the Iraq War. Trump implemented a temporary immigration ban from 7 Muslim countries.
.
One of these events has caused the media to make very firm judgments on morality and malicious intent.
Just as a counter-balance to my favorite “the media is evil” theme, I find it fascinating how little press the Canadian anti-immigrant white guy shoots up a mosque story is getting. The whole thing is confusing, a few hundred people get stuck at airports is a crisis and Muslims getting killed while worshiping doesn’t rate much coverage.
Lucia,
“Muslim ban” is most definitely a deliberately false and misleading term for the executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”. It is about terrorism, not Muslims. I don’t know what shorthand term the White House is using for the order. For the most part, the press seems to use neutral shorthand terms like “travel ban” and immigration pause”. I don’t get the impression that the press is systematically misrepresenting the order. But some elements of the press are most certainly doing so.
Hunter
Are you saying the numbers in this figure (which are given as estimates–and their basis explained) are wrong because WaPo is reporting them? Or are you saying that they are wrong because you have other data on how many visas were issued last year?
https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/files/2017/01/2300-visabreakdown0131-v2.jpg
As for the “so what?” I think that’s a fair question and it’s a political one. But even if we have different opinions on the answer to “so what” that doesn’t make the estimate of the number of people who were granted visas last year wrong or misleading. If WaPos estimate is substantively correct, reporting number is also not wrong or misleading.
I would say: wrt to the green card holders: preventing legal residents from traveling for 90 days is a bad thing. It should have been better considered. Moreover, if the ban applies to these people it certainly means the ban affects them. Saying so is not “misleading”.
You might consider it a “good” or “justified” effect– in fact, it was Trump’s intention for the ban to affect most of these people. He didn’t intend for it to have no effect. But it’s not correct to say that recognizing the ban affects these people is “misleading” — not even if there are 100 or so people who were affected in a much more dramatic immediate way.
I think you need to be more careful in claiming observations of actual facts when they are true is “misleading” merely because you would like the overall thrust of the EO. In fact,
(a) the travel ban does “affect” a lot of people by restricting their travel plans. It is intended to do so.
(b) it impacted a much smaller number of people rather dramatically on the day it rolled out.
(c) many of the criticisms about the legality were true on the day of the roll out. That’s why some provisions are stayed.
Yes it is true that some of (b) is a one day thing, but those people were still impacted and in some cases the impact is of dubious legality. It is also true that many of the people under (a) are the people whose travel Trump wants to affect and who you also would prefer the EO to affect. But that just means you like that they are affected, not that they are not affected. WRT to (c) some of the first day problems were limited to the first day. Airlines are blocking people from getting on planes and the administration has said the rules don’t apply to green cards (though the initial reading says it does.)
But, in fact, as far as I can tell, WaPo’s estimate of number of people “affected” is fair.
lucia: “as far as I can tell, WaPo’s estimate of number of people “affected†is fair.”
The number is exaggerated since it is for the number of visas issued in one year, while the travel ban is for 90 days.
I think that there is a lack of perspective here. As Tom Scharf points out, the number of Muslims killed in the war on terror is comparable to the number of people inconvenienced by the travel ban. And the number severely affected by the abrupt application of the ban is probably less than the number killed by drone strikes.
MikeM
But the administration states that after the ban, we will have some sort of continued “vetting”. Also: people who are affected in the 90 days are going to face uncertainty about the future. I know if Norway put in a 90 day ban on entry of Americans I would feel “affected” by it even though my planned trip is after the 90 day ban would end. I’d be wondering if I should cancel the tickets I’ve already paid for since I would have no idea what the status would be next July. So: if you are counting the number of people “affected” it certainly affects more than just the number who would have traveled here in 90 days.
What’s the correct number of days? I don’t know. So: here the estimate of the number depends what you mean by “affect”.
I’m not a big fan of the Pinnochios and I think WaPo changed context of the statement they were “fact checking” — and in fact, I think it’s not possible to get a good number. But it seems as good as any.
But I wouldn’t call the WaPo number “misleading”. The idea of “fact checking” is however — and their self decree that their number is somehow “more accurate”…. dunno about that. I know the basis of the number.
Your perspective may explain why you like the ban/vetting. But that doesn’t the fact that you guys are interpreting media reports as “misleading” when they aren’t.
That the number affected by abrupt application might be less than the number affected by drone strikes could be a factor in favor of doing this rather than escalating drone strikes– but people above were claiming the media is “misleading”. One needs to separate the idea of whether some claims are “misleading” from discussions about whether the plan itself is wise or better than something else.
I get you want to compare to drone strikes– but then just talk about why you think the ban is good or better than drone strikes.
Don’t throw around accusations like the media is “misleading” or the ban “doesn’t affect many people”. The ban affects a lot of people. So do drone strikes. Drone strikes actually kill people; in contrast this effect is to inhibit travel. Obviously, not being able to travel for business is not as bad as actually being bombed by a drone. But its still an effect.
The ban and clandestine strikes , BTW, are happening at the same time. Arab media is apparently filled with pictures of the 8 year-old daughter of Anwar Al-Awlaki recently killed.
For a bit more perspective:
“A Quinnipiac University poll in January found that, by a ratio of 48 to 42 percent, voters supported “suspending immigration from ‘terror prone’ regions, even if it means turning away refugees from those regions.†And a December Politico/Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health poll found that 50 percent of Americans favored “banning future immigration from regions where there are active terrorist groups.”
.
It seems pollsters can find a way to not use prejudicial language and one would never has guessed this action was supported by the scope and emotional content of the coverage.
In today’s press briefing Spicer refused to answer whether Trump intends to follow up on a campaign call to go after the families of terrorists .
The refugee and visa issuance are also being objected to. The 1965 law says you cannot discriminate based on national origin.
Due process at the border is not the same as due process elsewhere. American citizens are subject to having their belongings searched, Customs may search and copy your hard drive, etc. If you are on a flight from the Caribbean to Miami, and you don’t eat the inflight snack, you may get reported and forced to use the bathroom in view of agents to make sure you are not carrying drugs.
Tom Scharf,
I don’t know that the coverage is ’emotional’. Certainly those marching and protesting are. Those individuals stopped and their families who worried were emotional When they are interviewed we see emotion. But it’s just a fact that the protests are happening and those people are emotional. That’s not biased reporting: it’s just that this is the sort of thing that causes those most visible to be emotional– and talking to people detained is news. So is talking to survivors of earthquakes and so on.
People who favor the ban aren’t out in the streets, so naturally, they don’t end up in front of a reporters microphone.
True. But it is also not non-existent. That it is different does not mean that anything and everything is permitted at just on the other side of the boarder. If you want to defend the EO and its treatment of people who landed and were stopped, you need to explain why the things that happened are permissible, not just point out that due process can be “different”.
MIke N,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigration-ban-is-illegal.html?_r=0
It appears the article makes the argument that based on a 1965 statute, the administration can’t legally treat different categories of green card holders differently based on national origin, nor can they treat appications for green cards differently but note that treating over visa holders differently based on national origin seems to be permitted based.
If this is the correct interpretation of that law, the EO not stating it did not apply to green card holders or applications was, indeed, a legal screw up on the administration’s part. And, if so, it should be no surprise that people and the mediea are criticizing the EO for violating the law — since if it does, then the claims it that providion is not legal would be true. And if it’s true, or even arguably true, it’s no surprise judges have issued stays to bar implementation of these things.
Dan Drezner suggests that this is a mix of incompetence and strategic malevolence orchestrated by Bannon.
It appears that media push-back is by itself a symbol of Trump’s success for his supporters.
lucia,
as was pointed out, using the graph provided as evidence that 90,000 are effected by the 90 day ban is in itself deceptive by the WaPo.
I am not saying that I disbelieve them because they are numbers in the WaPo. I *doubt* them because the WaPo is obviously using them deceptively, just as we have seen climate hypesters misuse stats in support of the climate consensus, actually: take a grain of truth and extrapolate a terrible crisis from that grain.
And this “malevolence” assigned to Bannon in this or any situation is ludicrous. Again: If we are going to grant endless goodwill to the prior administration, no matter how often they were caught out lying about the substance of the issue, or being ruled against by the court, or rewriting law, then it is only fair to ask why the assignment of wicked motive and evil character even though the law supports what is being done?
j ferguson,
“If he’s still in office at the end of this term, I buy dinner in Stuart.”
.
Assuming we are both still around, your on. If he is fourced from officeby Congress before 4 years, then I’ll visit you and shout for dinner.
Hi SteveF,
Stuart will be fine in either case.
Lucia, I don’t know about green card holders, but I assume that the EO was intended to apply to green card applicants. They are applying for some sort of immigrant visa, presumably the diversity visa.
I am confused as to the terminology. State Department does not list permanent resident as a visa type, though I assumed it was a class of immigrant visa. If you stay out of the country too long, you are required to reapply for a visa to enter, even though the green card is not expired.
Wise policy or not, I don’t think a judge should have a say on who can enter the country. Regardless of what visa you are holding, a customs agent can deny entry at the US airport.
MikeN: If you have a green card, you can do virtually anything a citizen can do, but vote. However, if you leave the US and intend to abandon your permanent residence status, you can lose your green card status. (I doubt that it is theoretically a visa, but in any event, with a green card you can stay in the US indefinitely) About 5 years ago, there was a rule that if you were outside of the US for 366 days, you were presumed to have abandoned your permanent residency status. (I have gotten green cards for my 2 Chinese wives, the first is deceased and that was always a concern for my first wife, who did research) For info on permanent residency, see this link https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/after-green-card-granted/maintaining-permanent-residence
JD
JD the previous policy was that a customs agent can deny entry to someone with a visa. The visa was not an automatic permission to enter the country. With the judge’s ruling, this power has been taken away from customs agents and the executive branch. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3437025-A-Federal-Judge-Just-Halted-Parts-Of-Trump-s.html#document/p1
I think technically they can still deny for the third group of people listed(others legally authorized), but that is the group in which they are least interested.
MikeN Hopefully, there are rules governing customs agents rather each one of (let’s say 10,000 agents) making up their own policy on the spot with respect to visas.I do know that in the past, if you left the country and had committed certain types of crimes, DHS would match you against a computer database and deny entry because of that crime. Almost certainly these types of powers won’t be affected long-term.
….
Personally, I don’t care about the powers of customs agents, per se. I care about the rules they work under and consistent application of those rules.
JD
Breaking Michael Mann news. Judith Curry has filed an amicus brief in his case. see http://www.steynonline.com/7690/a-serial-transgressor-of-scientific-norms
Don’t see a post about it at her site yet.
JD
JD, yes of course the customs officers are acting as agents of the executive branch, as empowered by Congress and follow the rules set by the executive.
That isn’t really breaking news, as the brief was filed a week ago.
JD – Interesting. I see she’s taking a leaf from your book (if I understood some of your long ago posts), trying to educate the judges on what Mann’s like and what he is trying to do with this suit. I think that is the main point of the brief. It’s not as if they’re going to make factual findings based on the newspaper articles or blog posts she cites…
How do you like her analogy with Frye v. Daubert? It’s only an analogy but it’s an interesting way to try to explain to a non-scientifically trained lawyer that Consensus Isn’t Everything, not even in court.
(We chatted about the application of Daubert itself to this case a while ago and I am still worried about that if it reaches trial.)
Joseph W: Haven’t read the brief yet, but I will say that anything that shows Mann doing the same things that he accuses Steyn of doing very substantially helps the defense. Not only factually, but beneath the surface, the legal approach of judges to a case are affected by their underlying conceptions of justice and fairness. Of course, if the evidence gets in, juries are affected also.
….
Additionally, I would comment that if discovery proceeds the way it does in most instances, Mann will find that process very painful. Unfortunately, DC is very liberal and it is possible that the defendants won’t get a fair shake.
JD
Trump’s visit to Harley-Davidson cancelled. The Company feared his presence could cause demonstrations over the Muslim ban. Trump probably should stay in White House until this thing blows over, and try to keep from doing anything thing else that will cause trouble. But it may be hard for him to exercise self-control because he likes to stir things up and seems to crave attention.
SteveF,
Trump’s reign could be curtailed by actions other than by congress. He could resign, or be retired early pursuant to 25th amendment. I’d say neither of these involve congress but might still be products of his unsuitability to the role.
Lucia, hunter has a point.
90000 visas over a year is only 22500 in 90 days.
While hunters figure is too small the other figure is 4 times larger than it should be.
Very dodgy MSM reporting.
I do not recall if it was an election promise. If it was then forewarned would be more like tough luck, you knew it could happen re visas.
Obviously any ban is inconvenient but there is a counter message to the general mainly Muslim population there.
Tone down your terrorists or don’t bother coming.
As to whether this makes Americans more at risk, yes but only from the same people. If attacks occur it just reinforces Trump’s actions.
A win/win for both sides sadly.
.
Yes, almost verbatim
.
★ FIFTH , suspend immigration from terror-prone regions
where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people
coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.â€
.
This was not a surprise and it’s probably a good idea to review the list.
Andrew Bolt, ultra right wing Australian posts that one of our main daily newspapers had 20 articles on Trump Monday and 21 on Tuesday, all defamatory and mud slinging. I get the idea that American papers are no different but bad news and mud sells and he is the new Princess Diana, only as the prince frog.
This merciless attack is setting up Trump to be thrown out on the slightest pretext that sticks.
Much like the treatment given to recent Canadian and Australian Prime Ministers.
j ferguson,
OK, include resignation or forced out via the 25th amendment prior to completing his first term.
SteveF, If he resigns for health reasons, not under direct political pressure, I buy or dutch treat, your choice.
Actually as I watch this unfold, major media and the dems are playing “look! there’s a squirrel!” only they don’t know it. Another way to look at this is that they are crying “wolf!” about a million times too much. Trump is acting reasonably, lawfully, Presedentially and keeping his word transparently. Something no one expects a politician to do. Major media and dems (the oilgarchy) ate acting like cynical jerks. This is the climate wars writ large with climate extremists declaring every weather event proof of climate doom and suppressing any reasonable critical voice. Yahoo has a photo of Trump’s daughter dressed up Saturday night to go to a ball and the write up says she is telling refugees to eat cake by dressing up for formal. The antiTrump hysteria has repeatedly conflated and fabricated stories designed specifically to cause fear and outrage and then blame Trump for the fear their lies cause. This is not very different from falsely claiming all skeptics are part of a flat earth fossil fueled conspiracy of denia@!ists who want kill the Earth for profit.
MikeN
Then it should have included wording to say it only applied to green card applicants. It didn’t. As worded it applied to both.
If the wording didn’t match the intent, that as a screw-up and the fault lies with Trump.
I don’t think a customs agent– who is really just a person who got a particular job– should have the unilateral power to deny entry at a US airport for reasons that customs agent “likes”. Certainly judges should be able to overrule acts by customs agents that violate US law and even those that merely violate written policy.
MikeN: “the previous policy was that a customs agent can deny entry to someone with a visa. The visa was not an automatic permission to enter the country. With the judge’s ruling, this power has been taken away from customs agents and the executive branch.”
.
I think you misread the document you linked to. The judge only issued a stay of removal, he did not let anyone in to stay. I would guess that the affected individuals are being detained, but I don’t know that. They are certainly still subject to removal.
.
I seriously doubt that an individual customs agent, acting alone, can send a visa holder back to where he came from. There must surely be some sort of appeal or review.
Gorsuch. Ok I guess. Could be better, could be worse.
I’d like to indulge in a brief rant. Gorsuch is the author of The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. I have not read this [book]. I have read this and other short summaries:
I think that if a person absolutely owns anything at all, if they have any inalienable property right whatsoever, then that person must own his/her own life. What one owns, one has a right to dispose of at personal discretion, as seen fit, provided disposal doesn’t infringe on others. The state has no business interfering in this matter, regardless of the intrinsic value. If I elected to dispose of any of my other possessions I could, regardless of their intrinsic value. There is some difference between intentionally killing and withholding life saving treatment, but in my view it’s besides the point in the discussion.
Anyway. End rant, that is all.
Looking at it from a practical rather than philosophical angle, this makes no large difference to society, but in some small number of cases I think the results are to:
1. make it more difficult for somebody who wants to die in a manner that’s considerate to those left behind and a manner that is unlikely to be botched to cause excessive or prolonged suffering at the end to be able to commit suicide.
1.A. This may mean that some number of people will try to live as long as possible instead of opting out with dignity, which drives up health care costs.
Finally, I think as a practical matter is it absurd to jail somebody who wants to end their life. By electing to commit heinous crimes, a person could secure the assistance of the State in ending one’s own life, but there is no voluntary option without committing atrocities. This makes no sense to me.
There. Maybe that is really all this time.
There has been much criticism of Trump’s travel ban on the grounds of being poorly drafted and poorly executed. The criticism is justified. But part and parcel of that criticism is the claim the White House did not send the draft through proper channels for review. Now it turns out that the DoJ *did* review the EO and gave it approval: http://www.keloland.com/news/article/politics/acting-head-of-immigration-and-customs-ousted
That makes me inclined to believe the White House claims that they did properly consult with appropriate agencies.
.
If so, then how did the order end up going out without such deficiencies? I find myself wondering if Obama appointees and NeverTrumpers in DoJ, State, etc. sandbagged Trump. The swamp is full of poisonous, slithering things.
mark bofill,
You don’t have to actually commit a heinous crime. Just wave a gun around and point it at the cops when they show up. It’s called ‘suicide by cop’. Besides, death penalty cases go on for years even if you refuse to appeal.
Good point. Getting apprehended wouldn’t be the way to go. And just waving a gun around, one could avoid the unnecessary carnage.
.
I’ll keep that in the back of my mind, for future reference. 🙂
.
Thanks DeWitt.
Mike M. (Comment #158418)
February 1st, 2017 at 8:49 am
That government bureaucrats can do things and take actions no matter how inept without consequence might provide an answer to how these fiascoes occur be they under a Democrat or Republican.
Unfortunately in order to generalize this weakness of our government requires getting rid of the partisan rationalization for it when it occurs on their side and the pointing to it by the other side as if it never occurs on their side.
MikeN:
The administration’s initial interpretation was “all of them”.
MikeM:
That’s just Spicer’s claim actually. Even in your link, people are saying they heard about the EO from the media. I understand Trump has a gag order on discusssing the EO…how’s that for transparency?
Given how sloppy the roll-out was, I’m not sure exactly why.
j ferguson:
How will you separate “official reason” from “actual reason”? People often list “health issues” or “family issues” as a face-saving mechanism.
(I think there’s a decent chance he won’t make it through four years. I’m not even certain he really intends to.)
Out of curiosity, do you have a link to the restaurant?
Carrick: “That’s just Spicer’s claim actually. ”
No. That the DoJ reviewed and approved the EO is according to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, speaking after she was fired. You can look it up. After posting above, I found the actual quote at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Carrick
Yeah. If they have a heart attack, stroke, get bubonic plague etc, that’s a health issue. But otherwise, “health issues” is often a euphemism. Gout is a “health issue”. No one leaves a high paying job for gout. If the health issue isn’t pretty evident to the public, it’s usually face saving.
Kenneth Fritsch: “That government bureaucrats can do things and take actions no matter how inept without consequence …”
.
Yes. Each new administration feels that they need those bureaucrats, so they stay in office from one administration to the next. Fixing it will take someone who has little respect for those bureaucrats, is determined to drain the swamp, and is willing to make enemies in the process.
There is hope.
mark bofill
Many will agree with you. I’m on the bubble on that issue.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a conservative jurist who actually supports assisted suicide.
The reason I’m on the bubble is that on the one hand, I think people who are mentally competent should have a right to decide to end their own lives. So, for example, if my father-in-law with incurable cancer had wanted to end his life once he was in pain, I would think he should have a right too do so. (He did NOT want to end his life though. I was there at the end, and he did NOT want to go. Staying alove should be his right.)
On the other hand, the problem is that quite the situation is that when in their right minds, people know they would prefer to die rather than live in the final states of Alzheimers. But once they are in the middle stages– which is when they are diagnosed and likely may accept they have it– they are no longer competent to make decisions now. And once you put the decision in someone else’s hands all sorts of problems arise.
I mean… Dad and Rosemary had it. Suppose Dad had died a year earlier? Then there would be some non-negligible estate for his heirs. Whose making the decision about whether he dies? My guess is that would probably be people who might think they are heirs or who are related to heirs. The alternative is people who never new him.
Rosemary left and estate. It would have been larger if she’d died a year sooner. Who would be making the decision about her death? Probably the heirs.
Now, one might say that some specific heirs weren’t influenced by the money. But others certainly would be. And how do you safeguard this? That’s not easy.
The fact is, I found it emotionally difficult to euthenize my cat who was suffering from cancer and surely would have died within a week. (Could have saved money just letting him suffer.). I cant imagine how I could make the decision for a person.
Hi Carrick,
The place I had in mind, Stuart Grille and Ale has apparently closed, so I guess we’ll have to think of someplace else.
Do you ever come down this way?
We could distinguish the legitimacy of a claim of health reasons by the concurrent level of pressure from Congress, DOJ, or other body.
I suppose a retirement could be forced invisibly by it being a choice with impeachment or revelation of some significant naughtiness, the nature of the basis remain unknown. It seems to me that something like this is not unprecedented but i can’t offhand remember where it was done. I suspect it was a newspaper that discovered some misdeed by a public figure, confronted him with it and promised never to divulge if the miscreant withdrew immediately from public life.
Maybe someone who reads here will remember the specifics.
Lucia,
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
.
The problem is not so simple as I was painting it to be. I will think about this carefully.
.
Thank you.
Not to be a Debbie Downer but…
.
I took care of my mother through her late stages of terminal breast cancer and it’s pretty difficult to understand why someone shouldn’t be given an * option * of assisted suicide. My mother was a nurse and a hospice nurse and her term for this was “prolonging death”, not prolonging life.
.
My Mom was Catholic so she wasn’t going go that route anyway, but my mother effectively committed suicide by refusing to eat or take any nourishment at the end….because she wanted to die, and it took about a week of clearly unnecessary suffering.
.
Dying of terminal cancer is not pretty. It can take months. Walkers. Wheelchairs. Bedridden. Diapers. Pain. Mental Confusion. Giving up chemo. More pain. Hand feeding. Tube feeding. Gradual organ failure. Father close to a mental breakdown. Finally Death. Relief. Those are the greatest hits of that memory. That’s reality that people don’t talk about.
.
Realistically I think the prevalence of saving up a large enough dose of heavy duty pain medicine and the family taking matters into their own hands is much higher than people think.
lucia (Comment #158433)
“The fact is, I found it emotionally difficult to euthenize my cat who was suffering from cancer and surely would have died within a week. (Could have saved money just letting him suffer.). I cant imagine how I could make the decision for a person.”
_________
I can empathize. Either way feels bad. I doubt animals would choose to die rather than endure the pain of dying, but who knows. Do animals ever commit suicide?
MikeM:
I haven’t been able to find it. Can you give a link?
What I have found suggests any review was post-hoc and then over ridden, when legal concerns were expressed.
What should have happened was a 12-hour moratorium, along with explicit guidance provided to the customs officials and to the airlines. That this didn’t happens suggests that any feedback wasn’t being properly paid attention to.
(These sorts of ham-handed events are pretty common at the start of new administrations. Trump very well could get much better at rolling these out in the future. But it’s just one more reason to not rush them too much.)
j ferguson:
Ever two or three years. If I get done there, I’ll give you a holla!
I think that if a person absolutely owns anything at all, if they have any inalienable property right whatsoever, then that person must own his/her own life. What one owns, one has a right to dispose of at personal discretion, as seen fit, provided disposal doesn’t infringe on others
__________
I agree. I can”t imagine a good counter argument, just two bad ones.
1. God owns your body.
2. You are a slave.
Carrick: “What should have happened was a 12-hour moratorium, along with explicit guidance provided to the customs officials and to the airlines. That this didn’t happens suggests that any feedback wasn’t being properly paid attention to.”
.
Or it suggests that proper feedback was not given. That is supported by the fact that the feedback from DoJ was that it was fine. So it might be that other feedback was also inadequate, rather than being not sought or ignored.
I don’t have a link handy. You can search as well as I. The Volokh conspiracy article was about Yates being fired.
Max_OK: “What one owns, one has a right to dispose of at personal discretion, as seen fit, provided disposal doesn’t infringe on others”
.
I object to referring to life as property. Your statement implies that one should have the right to sell oneself into slavery.
I think that the law in every state now recognizes that a person has the legal right to take his own life. Even when the law said otherwise, suicide attempts were not prosecuted.
The question is whether someone should have the right to help someone else take his life. That is a very different kettle of fish.
Mike M:
I suppose you mean this.
What we have here is more of a reading of the tea leaves that a straightforward statement:
Yates memorandum (which this refers to) states nowhere that the review by OLC occurred prior to the issuance of the EO. Secondly, because the EO was ambiguous, there are interpretations which unquestionably are legal (e.g., restrict the EO to refugees as per Trump’s campaign promise).
So even if the OLC approved it, we/’d need to know what they factored into it.
Trump could clear all of this up by releasing all relevant feedback that he received. I’ll predict he won’t, because by any accounts I can find, the deliberation prior to its signing was almost nonexistent, and people were strong-armed into accepting it. And he’s not exactly starting off as the most transparent administration in history either.
Mike M.,
.
Well, actually that was me who put that idea forward, not Max.
.
I disagree that merely because I can’t sell something I don’t own that thing.
I was not aware that every state recognizes that people have a legal right to take their own life. If this is in fact so, then I agree with you; I was unwittingly arguing a straw man.
.
Thanks.
Mike M,
According to Wikipedia, this
is not so [does not appear to be so].
.
.
As you (and Lucia for that matter) point out, physician assistance, mental competence, and other factors play an important role and should not be overlooked.
Max_OK (Comment #158440)
“Do animals ever commit suicide?
–
Lemmings?
Male black widow spiders.
Some birds feign injury to distract predators from their nest courting death.
Carrick,
Yes, that is the article I meant.
.
Carrick: “Yates memorandum (which this refers to) states nowhere that the review by OLC occurred prior to the issuance of the EO.”
But I see no other way to read it that makes sense.
.
Carrick: “Secondly, because the EO was ambiguous, there are interpretations …”
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that would imply that the EO was not properly drafted, in which case it appears that the OLC did not properly do their job.
Tom Scharf
Yes. Jim’s two cousins joke darkly about “the black pill”.
All pets become people with time and the longer they live the harder to euthanasia them if injured or really suffering from effects of overaging.
People often change their minds both ways when the crunch comes and still compos mentis.
Best to put a plan in place while one has one’s marbles and hope the rules change when we get there.
All suicides are a form of euthanasia, severe mental suffering.
Much easier to help people rather than have them jump shoot hit trees or stand in front of trains.
At least they would have extra time in which they might have a change of mind, not cause a mess and also not take others with them.
Too morbid.
It’s been almost a day and no skeletons have been found on Gorsuch. If that continues to be the case the political environment forces the left to filibuster anyway, and the right will happily go nuclear to fix it. As it sits now we have Democrats not showing up for committee votes as some sort of crazy protest, the activists on the left are following Tea party doctrine and threatening primary battles to anyone who is not sufficiently anti-Trump.
.
WH. House. Senate without filibuster. Nobody saw this coming on Nov 7th. You might as well go big because you are going to get hammered in the next few elections anyway.
.
The only thing I remember from a FL Trump commercial is how it started: “Donald Trump will turn Washington upside down”. At least that’s one promise he is keeping so far. As one of my favorite actors said: “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”
MikeM:
We’re trying to parse one element of a longer memo. It seems pretty high risk to put too much weight on it.
That’s where I speculate that some amount of strong-arming was involved.
Lucia, Carrick, I am not arguing green card holders vs applicants. The comments implied that you thought the inclusion of green card applicants was a mistake they could have avoided, and I think it’s what they intended. to include green card applicants and not just tourist visa applicants and other nonimmigrant visas.
Angech, visa holders usually have a larger time frame to make use of the visa, 6 months and even 10 years is not uncommon, though probably not for residents of those countries. So a 90 day stay would affect a much larger group.
MikeM, perhaps I am missing something in the order, but it says no removal and no detention. Anyone with an issued visa has to be allowed into the country. That the executive branch makes a final determination at entry, is eliminated until the judge resolves the case, and the judge can take a long time to do so.
mark bofill,
I don’t see what an article on euthanasia has to do with the legality of suicide. According to Wikipedia “By the early 1990s only two states still listed suicide as a crime, and these have since removed that classification”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation#United_States
But that gives no reference and goes on with some rambling about “common law crime” that I found indecipherable. So this may be a case where Wikipedia is not to be trusted.
“Best to put a plan in place while one has one’s marbles”
.
This is a very important point. During a long drawn out death a dying person effectively goes crazy due to the brain losing nutrients. I knew it was going sideways when my Mom told me very seriously “I’ve never heard a taco bark like that before”. They can no longer be trusted to advise you on termination questions and making that decision yourself is difficult to say the least.
Mike M.,
.
Thank you. I think that’s quite interesting, that apparently suicide is legal but apparently the practice of ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering is not. Perhaps this underscores the distinction you were making here:
But I agree with the distinction you are making.
So – apparently this is a non issue. Thanks to Mike M. for pointing this out. So long as I keep the means available to myself and take care of it while I still have the capacity to, apparently the law will not interfere. Good to know.
I might want to carry poison in a hollow tooth to guard against the possibility of my slipping, falling, breaking my neck, becoming paralyzed from the neck down and surviving. But other than that it looks like it ought to be OK.
It doesn’t cover the judge’s order, but here is Andy McCarthy on the issue of discrimination with green card applicants
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/444471/mccarthy-patterico-trump-immigration-order
As a libertarian I am hoping that the yahoo character of Trump who provoked the yahoo character of his Republican primary opponents and now is doing the same with the Democrats will at some point in time remind the voting public that these politicians are nearly all yahoos (with Trump as the head yahoo) and including their supporters in the media and attempt to answer the question of whether you want these yahoos having control over your existence.
Mike M. (Comment #158444)
February 1st, 2017 at 2:13 pm
Max_OK: “What one owns, one has a right to dispose of at personal discretion, as seen fit, provided disposal doesn’t infringe on othersâ€
.
I object to referring to life as property. Your statement implies that one should have the right to sell oneself into slavery
____
Mike, I was quoting mark bofill and agreeing, but forgot to credit him. I’m not concerned about people selling themselves into slavey. Who does that? And buying people doesn’t appeal to me.
You said “The question is whether someone should have the right to help someone else take his life. That is a very different kettle of fish.”
Mike, I agree. Assistance should meet stringent requirements.
angech (Comment #158448)
February 1st, 2017 at 3:00 pm
Max_OK (Comment #158440)
“Do animals ever commit suicide?
–
Lemmings?
Male black widow spiders.
Some birds feign injury to distract predators from their nest courting death.
________
Yes, I hadn’t thought about those cases. I was wondering if any sick or injured animal would kill itself rather than suffer without hope. But I guess an animal would not known it’s condition was hopeless.
Cats sometimes go off and hide when they are sick, and sometimes they die before they are found or are never found. I wouldn’t call that suicide exactly, though.
Max_OK (Comment #158465): “I’m not concerned about people selling themselves into slavey. Who does that?”
.
Millions of people, mostly in South Asia; at least if you count debt bondage as slavery. It used to be far more common before it was made illegal virtually everywhere, including South Asia.
.
Max_OK: “Assistance should meet stringent requirements.”
.
I am concerned that no such requirements are immune to slippage. I have seen reports of involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands as well as assisted suicides where the victim is depressed, not terminally ill. Dependent persons might be pressured into agreeing to be killed, or prevented from rescinding a prior agreement.
.
I tend to be skeptical of slippery slope arguments. But I think that there is no telling where we might get to once we begin to weaken the taboos against killing and suicide.
An article recently where the patient changed their mind and the doctor had them held down while he administered the drugs. He was cleared of any wrongdoing.
The idea of “assisted suicide” seems oxymoronic. I think it will inevitably become ” sanctioned murder”, much more problematic that capital punishment. More of a cliff than a slippery slope. I wonder what CS Lewis or GK Chesterton would have written on the concept.
MikeN (Comment #158471): “An article recently …”
I suppose that would be this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2729450/dutch-doctor-who-drugged-elderly-euthanasia-patient-and-gave-her-lethal-injection-as-she-fought-desperately-not-to-be-killed-did-not-break-the-law-panel-rules/
hunter: “I think it will inevitably become sanctioned murderâ€.
It seems that in the Netherlands, it has reached that point, see above.
Yes, that’s messed up. Good example of the practical issues that will come up.
“The idea of “assisted suicide†seems oxymoronic. I think it will inevitably become †sanctioned murderâ€
hunter,
I’ve been wondering if anyone has considered that the intention of some to assist in “suicide” just comes from a desire to kill?
Andrew
Mike M. (Comment #158470)
February 1st, 2017 at 10:53 pm
Max_OK (Comment #158465): “I’m not concerned about people selling themselves into slavey. Who does that?â€
.
Millions of people, mostly in South Asia; at least if you count debt bondage as slavery. It used to be far more common before it was made illegal virtually everywhere, including South Asia.
______
Mike, I forgot about debt bondage. No, I don’t count it at slavery but it’s not much better. Brings to mind the line “I owe my soul to the company store” from an old song (16 tons?). Also, share cropping. Both mild forms of debt bondage. If you really stretch the definition, you might include alimony or even marriage itself.
I share your concern about assisted suicide. I couldn’t directly assist a suffering person who asked. Could I help by contacting someone who would assist? I don’t know. I hope I never have to make that decision. But if I were suffering, and had decided to end my life, I would want assistance to make suicide as easy for me as possible.
Max,
Thanks. I was groping for this sentiment as well. I think in what I said this came across wrong.
.
As easy as possible for me and in particular for the loved ones that I leave behind. I wouldn’t want them to have to deal with my mess, or police reports if they would have to be police investigations and reports, or any of it.
hunter (Comment #158473)
February 2nd, 2017 at 5:58 am
The idea of “assisted suicide†seems oxymoronic. I think it will inevitably become †sanctioned murderâ€, much more problematic that capital punishment.
______
Don’t know what you mean by problematic. If it’s OK for a group to seek assistance in killing a person, why isn’t it OK for a person to seek assistance in killing himself. If the assistant to the suffering patient is a murderer, why isn’t the hangman.
Max_OK: “If the assistant to the suffering patient is a murderer, why isn’t the hangman.”
.
For the same reason that a lynch mob commits murder, even if the person lynched has been convicted of murder.
One difference is a little thing called “due process”. Another is that one has firmly constrained boundaries, the other does not.
.
Max_OK (Comment #158442): “I canâ€t imagine a good counter argument [against suicide], just two bad ones.
1. God owns your body.
2. You are a slave.”
.
Unless you are a hermit in a cave, everything you do impacts others. That is especially so when matters of life and death are involved. No man is an island.
—–
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
– John Donne
hunter
As a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, I suspect CS Lewis would be against both assisted and non-assisted suicide.
CS Lewis was an Anglican – ie Church of England – not a Catholic.
Szilard,
You’re right! I thought he was Roman Catholic. Shows what I know!
C.S. Lewis != Catholic got me too.
If you do not approve of the idea, all of the arguments under the sun will develop.
From the practical to the surreal.
John Donne was wrong, we all die alone just as we live.
Our personal island, our world, dies when we die.
Every death reminds us of our own fragility.
Yeah I don’t really know what larger point there is to this. Still, I’ll say that because everyone’s eventual death is utterly inevitable, I prefer not to look at the end of people’s lives as diminishing me.
*shrug* But I really have no particular beef with those who disagree with me on this point. Whatever works for you I guess.
Mike M. –
While it’s true that what we do affects others, and certainly such decisions more than most, I reject the implication that others thereby have a claim which can preclude one’s choices. Especially in this final decision.
Not sure if that was your point, or if I’m reading beyond what you intended.
HaroldW: “While it’s true that what we do affects others, and certainly such decisions more than most, I reject the implication that others thereby have a claim which can preclude one’s choices. Especially in this final decision.”
.
I was objecting to the idea that one’s choice has *no* impact on others. I am not sure what choice you think I mean to preclude.
I would say that if a person chooses to end their life, they have at least some right to do so. And I have the right to disapprove. So does society as a whole. To legalize assisted suicide would be to grant at least some degree of approval to suicide. That sets us on a slippery slope that potentially threatens me and all others. So I oppose that.
Dr. Kervorkian’s rise and fall in selling (and assisting) assisted suicide is worth reviewing.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/colleen-carroll-campbell/article_d8a52334-bdc1-54a0-b57b-bba75e075565.html
The point of CS Lewis and Chesterton references was not their Anglicism/Catholicism. It is that both spoke about the negative effects of state sanctioned intrusions into the most intimate areas of our lives. Lewis wrote a fascinating SF book called “That Hideous Strength” which talks about the early formation of a despotic state. Chesterton was an early and contrarian critic of eugenics, predicting some of the tragic extremes that Germany would impose in the 1930’s. Having sat with dear family and friends and even strangers at the scene of an accident as the end came, I have mixed feelings about assisting a deliberate end. I am not opposed to letting a “natural death” occur…limits to heroic measures, IV feeding, intubation with machine set breathing, etc. but the precipice of opportunity to “assist” unwanted/hated/troublesome/wealthy/expensive care people move on to the other side is problematic and irreversible.
Monty Python, as they frequently do on so many topics, offers sound insights on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPatfgoNBRo
HaroldW (Comment #158494)
February 2nd, 2017 at 3:09 pm
Mike M. –
“While it’s true that what we do affects others, and certainly such decisions more than most, I reject the implication that others thereby have a claim which can preclude one’s choices. Especially in this final decision.”
___________________
If I were terminally Ill and considering assisted suicide to end my agony, I would think about how my decision could affect my loved ones, but I wouldn’t lose sleep worring about how it could affect people out there who would prefer that I suffer longer.
Indeed, if I was looking to pick a fight, I might suggest that it’s an awfully collectivist idea, that *everybody* has some sort of claim on my life. Sounds pretty communist to me. :p
.
But I’m not looking to pick a fight. The unintended consequence that greedy heirs would pressure aging relatives to die does not appear far fetched to me, and I think the problems caused by this may very well outweigh the benefits provided by assistance. So, this is sufficient in my view; the question of whether or not anybody and everybody has a claim is moot to me.
Max_OK, 😀
Mike_M: “I would say that if a person chooses to end their life, they have at least some right to do so.”
I would say that such right is unqualified. [Excluding such options as a pilot crashing his passenger-laden plane.] Certainly it will affect others — friends & family. (Or even Max_OK’s enemies.) And like many decisions, one should *consider* the effects on those one holds dear. But that doesn’t take away from the right to act.
Perhaps you can elaborate on why you think the right is limited — when other persons or the state must intervene.
HaroldW: “Perhaps you can elaborate on why you think the right is limited”.
If a police officer sees a person who appears to be preparing to throw himself off a bridge, the officer should intervene (not limited to police, just most obvious in that case).
You do not have the right to commit suicide by cop, even if you do it in such a manner that there is no risk of physical harm to anyone other than yourself.
You do not have the right to throw yourself in front of my car, even if you do it in such a manner that there is no risk of physical harm to anyone other than yourself.
And so on.
One obvious factor is whether your suicide is public or private. But that may not be the only one.
Mike M,
Are you speaking of legal rights or moral rights? Real question.
mark bofill: “the problems caused by this may very well outweigh the benefits provided by assistance. So, this is sufficient in my view; the question of whether or not anybody and everybody has a claim is moot to me.”
.
Thank you for seeing a key part of the issue. If Max_OK wants to kill himself, and does it in a manner that is considerate of others, then it is really not my business. But if Max_OK wants the law changed to make it easier to do so, then that is my business.
.
People tend to see things in binaries. So if A is false, then B is seen as being true, even if it is logically possible for both A and B to be false. The greater the emotional stakes, the stronger the tendency to do that. So if suicide is not always the wrong thing to do, then, in the minds of most people, suicide must sometimes be the *right* thing to do (as opposed to merely being permissible). Then an elderly person being pressured by loved ones is not just limited to the case of greedy heirs. And making the decision for those who can not decide for themselves (involuntary euthanasia) becomes OK. Denying treatment to people over a certain age would not be far behind, especially if the state is paying for it.
.
Once suicide is the right thing to do, it is only a short step to it being the expected thing to do and then to being the required thing to do.
.
The assisted suicide movement claims to be about giving people the right to assistance in dying. A predictable consequence is that, if successful, it will end up taking away the right for assistance in continuing to live.
mark bofill: “Are you speaking of legal rights or moral rights?”
.
Good question as to the claims made by Max_OK and HaroldW, not so much, I think, for for the things that I have said.
Edit: I suppose I will have to think on this point.
Thanks Mike M.
In my view, we encode in our legal system the best approximation we can manage of what is morally right. Because we don’t have infinite powers it’s just an approximation – sometimes innocent men get convicted and sometimes guilty men go free, sometimes people get what they don’t deserve or don’t get what they do deserve. So on.
We have to live with the best we can do. In my opinion, this means willingly accepting that our legal encoding of what is right will never be identical to what is morally right. It’s just the best we can manage. This is where the pragmatic results start to play in justifying different policy options in my way of thinking.
[Edit: In the case we are currently looking at, I think freedom and convenience has to be balanced against the likely abuse of that freedom to drive people to end their lives, perhaps even murder people in the edge cases, and get away with it. Being a conservative, I err on the side of the status quo, which means I don’t mess with it unless I’m pretty durn sure it’s both urgent and that making a change will probably work out OK.]
MikeM,
.
I agree with your observations as well regarding cultural change. I still puzzle over how (IMO) America became a nation of pussies in apparently just a couple two or three generations. It’s tricky.
mark bofill: “In my view, we encode in our legal system the best approximation we can manage of what is morally right.”
.
I strongly disagree. That attitude is responsible for much that is wrong with our politics and has the potential to destroy our society. People can not agree on what is morally right without agreeing on religion.
.
Ideally, the legal system should only codify that which is mandatory for the functioning of society and the protection of the individual. Morality might inform the law, but it should not define the law. Morality should be left to religion, tradition, and public pressure, not the heavy hand of the state.
.
Of course, people have long been unable to resist writing laws to enforce morality. Hence laws against adultery, sodomy, suicide, etc. Those used to be aberrations that only went into effect when there was near universal agreement. But a century ago, progressives started trying to use the law to reform both society and individuals; i.e., to enforce things like Prohibition that they thought should be so but on which there was far from universal agreement. Conservatives decry that, then turn around and do it themselves; they don’t seem to realize that they are doing it, since we have gotten so used to the idea.
.
All this is complicated by the fact that people tend to think that if something is legal, it is OK. Furthermore, social (as opposed to legal) constraints on behavior have been severely undermined. Because of that, I am unwilling to go full libertarian.
.
So I am inclined to think that the law should be silent on private acts of suicide, even thought I think that suicide is morally wrong. I used to think the same about assisted suicide, until I realized that would eventually threaten individuals.
Thanks! How interesting.
.
I suspect you misunderstand me. Do not imagine that I believe enforcing certain specific behaviors is synonymous with morality. Near the very root of what is right, it is morally right for men to be free.
.
[Edit: I understand – if you view morality as purely subjective, then there is a dilemma there. I wouldn’t say I’m a rigorous follower of the ideas of Ayn Rand, but I will go so far as to say I take her premise that there is an objective right and wrong, if you pick your philosophical starting place properly.]
But then again, if one views morality as purely subjective, then how do you justify any legal system? Why is freedom better than slavery? ‘Better’ implies some standard of judgement, of right and wrong.
[Edit: Sorry, I got swept away and started asking rhetorical questions without answering them. First question is real, second is rhetorical, my answer is ‘freedom is morally better than slavery.’]
One last remark (I’ll organize my thoughts better next time before I reply!)
Yes. This is because it is morally right for men to be free. This is why the law and the interference of government should be minimized on general principles.
Mike M. (Comment #158503)
February 3rd, 2017 at 8:40 am
mark bofill: “the problems caused by this may very well outweigh the benefits provided by assistance. So, this is sufficient in my view; the question of whether or not anybody and everybody has a claim is moot to me.â€
.
Thank you for seeing a key part of the issue. If Max_OK wants to kill himself, and does it in a manner that is considerate of others, then it is really not my business. But if Max_OK wants the law changed to make it easier to do so, then that is my business.
_______
Mike and Mark, I can understand if you are uneasy about laws that would make assisted suicide more accessible for the terminally ill. . While I would want the option for myself, and hope my family and friends would accept my decision if I wanted to end the agony of slow death, I would have trouble accepting their decisions to do the same.
I might find it easier to accept a loved one’s decision to end his or her suffering if I knew what it was like to live in agony with no hope, but knowing would not be possible without being in the same situation myself. The closest I can come to knowing was having the norovirous (sp?), and believe me if every day of my remaining life was going to be like my worst day with that virus, I would want assisted suicide. Obviously, my illness was not completely like what the terminally ill experience. I knew I would get better. They know they won’t.
Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t prosecute.
Max,
.
Good, except that that’s not where my problem lies. It’s not unlikely that I’d have a hard time coming to terms with it if my mother decided it was time for her to die, or my brother, or my daughter, but that’s not why I’m uneasy about laws making suicide easier. No, my problem comes in because people suck and they will abuse it. Some number of people will try to push older relatives to go ahead and get on with it and die already. I think some will skirt the edges and commit murder this way.
.
I think the injustice of these probable abuses outweighs the injustice of interfering with a persons right to obtain assistance in ending their lives. It *is* interfering with their moral right in my view, no question. But it’s still a better approximation overall of what’s right and just, IMO. This is a question of fact, not principle IMO. I could very well be wrong.
.
thanks Max.
“Considerate to others”….. my neighbor is the son of a man who wanted to be “considerate to others” with his suicide. It was many years ago and the pain his “consideration” caused is still being played out in the life of my neighbor.
I see the law making an institution out of this with a legal framework and protocols something that is very likely, in the hands of the inevitable heartless bureaucrat that will eventually administer it, a catastrophe.
I like Tom’s take:
“Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t prosecute.”
That way vested and corrupt interests are operating with the weight of a murder prosecution on their minds. And the media/state oligarchy is not going to start in on making the process more “efficient”.
I saw an insipid infomercial dressed up as a movie last fall called “Me Before You”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/3/me-you-movie-spurs-disabled-rights-protests-over-p/
Advertised as a cute romance, it was actually selling assisted suicide as a sexy romantic idea. And instead did a great job of helping me look more negatively at the idea.
mark bofill (Comment #158513)
“that’s not why I’m uneasy about laws making suicide easier. No, my problem comes in because people suck and they will abuse it. Some number of people will try to push older relatives to go ahead and get on with it and die already. I think some will skirt the edges and commit murder this way.”
________
Yes, that could happen, but it could serve a purpose by letting you know who really cares for you and who you should remove from your will. I hope I don’t have relatives who would push me to get it over with, but if I do, they will not benefit from my death, suicide or not.
Max,
You may be right. It’s what I mean when I say it’s a question of fact. Do the cons in fact outweigh the pros? It’s usually debatable.
mark bofill,
.
You make good points, but I think we have been partially misunderstanding each other. In particular, I seem to have misunderstood you when you wrote “we encode in our legal system the best approximation we can manage of what is morally right.†Also, I did not mean to imply that morality is subjective; I certainly do not believe that. But there are different systems of morality. You cite Ayn Rand’s premise that there is an objective right and wrong, if you pick your philosophical starting place properly. True, but people pick different starting places.
.
I also agree with you that morality can not be ignored and that it is morally right for men to be free. That is the starting place for the way I think about government. I did say that morality informs the law. But being free must allow for having different ideas as to morality.
.
I think that your statement that “the law and the interference of government should be minimized on general principles” and mine that “the legal system should only codify that which is mandatory for the functioning of society and the protection of the individual” are in essential agreement.
mark bofill,
Why and on whose authority? I agree with Mike M., more or less. Morality should have little to do with the legal system.
I tried to read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity once. I couldn’t get past his premise that there is, in fact, some sort of God given universal morality. We pass laws against theft, not because it’s immoral, but because civilization as we know it couldn’t survive if people were allowed to take whatever they wanted from someone else without compensation or permission.
In fact, that’s the fundamental fallacy in Karl Marx’s slogan: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. In the real world that morphs into the Russian joke: We pretend to work and you pretend to pay us.
Mike M., mark bofill —
Thanks for the discussion, I appreciate your laying out your views clearly. I line up behind Max_OK (#158511).
DeWitt,
I will try to answer. I’m going to take a few hours (perhaps a day) to organize my thoughts [first].
DeWitt,
Civilization as we know it wouldn’t survive, but a civilization could. The devil would be in the details of your hypothetical that you have not presented. I think you are assuming that everyone would be naturally aggressive. There would have to be some kind of enforcement agency if everyone was supposed to be involved. I can envision limitations on people taking things from each other. If done too often, it would become tiresome. Some people would simply be too weak to take something from someone, therefore needing some kind of assistance. The strongest would thrive. The question is why one type of civilization would be preferable to another.
Andrew
Re: the argument about the number of visas affected by the Muslim ban. The WaPo had it right. The Justice Department admitted in court that 100,000 visas were revoked . Compare that to Spicer’s statement that 109 people were affected.
Nah, rather than some top down mess, let’s just start with what we have.
Okay (will ask and try to answer rhetorical questions),
Why do we care if civilization as we know it survives? Somehow we have a concept that civilization is desirable, it’s what we care about having, it’s … good.
Now – let me say right here and now that y’all can bust me for misusing terms, and you’ve got a case. When people talk about morality, usually they are talking about some subjective religion based thing. So in a sense perhaps I’m abusing the term.
Cutting to the chase – man is an intelligent social animal with a specific nature. I argue that at least in general cases, there is a moral right and wrong that can be derived from operational right and wrong by intelligently pursuing a theory of self interest.
I don’t necessarily want to make that full argument in this comment, but. I guess we could talk about it when/if somebody wants to try to debunk me. 🙂 I’m game, but it’s been awhile. I’m sure I’ll misstate my case, and in some cases misremember my case along the way, if that’s where we’re going.
Alot of my premise and starting point is plain vanilla Ayn Rand objectivism. Here for those who want the argument as Rand put it forward. I seem to remember thinking I diverge from Rand’s ‘populist philosophy’ arguments at some point, but I forget the details. Been a long while.
[Edit:
Thanks Harold.]
DeWitt: “Why and on whose authority?”
.
On the authority of the Founding Fathers. Since it is based on authority, “why” is superfluous. 🙂
.
More seriously, there are many ways to order society. Historically, the English speaking peoples have treasured liberty and have incorporated that into the organization of their societies. That is the tradition of our society in the U.S. and I, for one, am keen to preserve and restore it.
.
Others have organized their societies differently. Some permitted murder, provided that the murderer was willing to either pay the blood price or suffer retribution from the victim’s relatives. In others, individuals had no rights at all. In my opinion, our way is superior. I could argue for that, but I could not prove it.
mark bofill,
Ayn Rand’s Egoism is a variant of consequentialism, as is utilitarianism. It can be traced back at least to the Greek hedonists.
Wikipedia, as usual, barely scratches the surface:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
I think the reason why people invoke religion to determine moral rules is that it’s not at all clear that one can derive all the rules for a working society from some general principle like the pursuit of happiness. It’s sort of like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in mathematics. The devil, as they say, is in the details.
DeWitt,
I will think about this carefully, but
I have a difficult time fathoming why a fairly arbitrary set of rules gives a working society yet it is impossible that we can come up with rules for a working society derived from the pursuit of happiness.
I don’t buy it.
mark bofill,
Did you read the Wikipedia link? For every variant of utilitarianism, the two main ones being act based and rule based, there are strong arguments why they won’t work in practice.
First question: Define happiness. Second question: whose happiness? It goes rapidly down hill from there.
The Founding Fathers relied on English Common Law, which developed more or less organically over many centuries. Common Law is largely uncodified and relies on precedent, i.e. previous judicial decisions. Other countries use Civil Law, which is totally codified.
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/CommonLawCivilLawTraditions.html
DeWitt, Mark,
“We hold these thuths to e self evident:” seems to me as solid a basis for a society of laws as any based on religion or philosophy. (Many of the founders were well versed in philosophy, of course.)
I read it, but perhaps not carefully enough. I’ve got some stuff to do anyway, but I promise I will look at it carefully and get back to you. I appreciate the discussion, it’s a topic I’m genuinely interested in.
Thanks.
mark bofill: “I have a difficult time fathoming why a fairly arbitrary set of rules gives a working society yet it is impossible that we can come up with rules for a working society derived from ____ ”
.
It does not matter what you insert in the blank, it won’t work. It is impossible to start de novo from some set of principles and derive a set of rules for a working society (at least, not a humane one). The reason is that society is far too complex; the unexpected consequences of the rules will cause the attempt to fail.
.
The only practical way to get a working society is through centuries of experimentation and change that is mostly incremental.
OK, I see how I misinterpreted the judges’ orders. They ordered that no one be detained or removed from the US. I thought it represented no ability to deny entrance to the country for people with visas. However, it actually applied to a smaller group, because Trump revoked the visas. No detention or removal of people with a valid visa, Trump gets to deny entry to people who are a security risk.
Mike m,
If some humane society is in my self interest (don’t see why that’s hard to show) then rules that preclude such a society must be wrong, or at least suboptimal.
If the argument is that it’s intractably complex, adopt general principles (arguably a good idea for other reasons anyway) and simplify bound and approximate.
DeWitt,
I’ve re-read the wiki link.
I think act based is flat out silly. I’d be glad to talk about rule based.
I find these:
6 Criticisms
6.1 Ignores justice
–A concept of justice is important to people. We have a concept of fair, and it matters to us. Rule systems that don’t take this into account aren’t going to work well. It does not pay to ignore human nature in coming up with these rules.
6.2 Predicting consequences
–This doesn’t seem like a strong argument to me. Yes, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Doesn’t matter.
6.3 Demandingness objection
–well, this isn’t what I’m talking about. No part of Rand’s view either.
6.4 Aggregating utility
–again, maybe this applies to utilitarianists, I don’t think this is relevant to me or objectivists.
6.5 Calculating utility is self-defeating
–it is, which is one of the reasons act utilitarianism is stupid and rule utilitarianism makes more sense. Have to adopt principles, for more reasons than just that it takes too long to calculate utility of everything.
6.6 Karl Marx’s criticism
–might mean something to you. Meant nothing to me.
6.7 John Paul II’s personalist criticism
–again, not clear why or how this is an objection, that ‘it tends to make people the object of use’. So what.
It’s hard to define happiness, sure. I start with everybody being concerned for their own happiness.
.
Look – the argument seems to boil down to three (3) things:
1. The wiki shows people have tried and failed to come up with moral systems based on self interest. OK, this doesn’t mean it can’t be done, just that people have tried and failed.
.
2. It seems there is some argument that this is hard to do, that nobody can derive a working system, cause it’s too darn difficult and complicated. I understand that I said ‘derive this from that’ earlier. It’s not clear to me that this was actually central to my point. In other words, I may be willing to concede that in practice this is really difficult to just go derive. Maybe there are other practical ways to attack the problem. I think this is an implementation issue and not a theoretical issue. For example see #3:
.
3. Some systems work in practice. Some systems are better than others. If I concoct a ‘rule based’ system that largely conforms to the legal and moral rules in widespread use in the U.S. today, it seems to me that might be a good approximation starting point. I don’t see why the implementation issue of deriving everything from scratch needs to be a real obstacle.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #158544) on the other post
The green card issue was not a rookie mistake in the sense of a mix-up. It was intentional policy as devised by Bannon. The cabinet, judicial system, Congress and the press will have to step up in the coming years.
mark bofill,
Because it would be cheating. You can’t have a rule whose only justification is: ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it and it seems to work’. If you do that, you no longer have a purely utilitarian system. You’ll have a variant of English Common Law. Which is what he already have.
Strictly speaking, Ayn Rand’s egoism isn’t utilitarianism, it’s a subset of consequentialism, as is utilitarianism.
RB,
Yes. That’s what I though I said. The banning of green card holders was specifically ordered by the Trump administration. Re-reading my comment, however, it seems more than a bit convoluted.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/04/errors-from-the-press-are-piling-up-in-the-opening-weeks-of-the-trump-administration/ read this and consider the implications that major media really is deliberately deceiving us.
DeWitt,
.
For formal proof, probably that’s true. I think we are coming at this from different angles. I’m interested in some working theory, not necessarily rigorously proven. If I can do better than pure subjective well, ISIS prefers that man live in submission to Allah and I prefer freedom but it’s all just arbitrary preference, then I consider myself ahead of the game. I feel like I ought to be able to put together a clever and inspiring argument that draws from and elaborates on the problems plaguing our nation today. I ought to insert that here to wrap up this point, but I’m not up to it this morning.. 🙂 Everybody here is bright, those interested can fill in the blanks for themselves I guess.
.
You don’t need to point out that a certain teeny very small (ahumCough) amount of vigorous rationalization is involved with my position, I’m aware of it. 🙂 For example, I would argue that no supposedly ‘utilitarian’ rule that leads to a system that clearly doesn’t work can possibly really have utility. I mean, if at the end of the day it gives rise to a system that doesn’t work, ultimately where is the utility? Perhaps this leads into the question of ‘good for who’, where I’d argue that, at least in the general case, working as a ‘predator’ completely against the interests of one’s fellows does not appear to have much utility in our day to day life; overwhelmingly in the general case humans find huge advantages in working together. I think there are so many examples of this in our world that they actually become hard to see.
.
However it’s not lost on me that these are rationalizations that can justify many different systems. I’m well aware they [don’t] get the job done uniquely justifying the claims I want justified.
.
Anyway. In the grab bag of things left I’d like to mention: I would like to point out before we wrap this up that merely because I am obviously too careless and lightweight a thinker to work through and present a self interest system that derives and justifies morality, and merely because people who have tried before have failed, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
.
I think I’m ready to wrap this for presumed lack of interest. But I always very much and sincerely appreciate your comments and insights. Tank you sir.
mark bofill,
You’re welcome.
PBS/Frontline produces some of best documentaries. I think they try very hard to stay neutral.
.
Trump’s Road To The White House
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trumps-road-to-the-white-house/
.
I did kind of laugh when almost every media outlet they interview was from NY or DC, but I think it’s pretty obvious they edited out any extraneous name calling and stayed on point.
Need one and another (NOAA) blog chapter on our friends problems over at NOAA.
Karl retired some time ago did he?
The Daily Mail is less than thrilled with Karl:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html
Adjusting buoy data to match engine intake temperature data, rather than the other way around, in ERSST v4 seems somewhat questionable as engine intake temperature is not exactly a gold standard for sea surface temperature.
But the goal of the paper was to debunk the ‘pause’ just before the Paris climate summit.
angech,
If six months is some time ago, then yes. He announced his retirement in August, 2016.
Tom Scharf, PBS has another documentary about immigration reform. In it they casually drop a bombshell- immigration amnesty nearly passed in 2014. Majority of Republicans in the House were in favor and they were meeting to celebrate with only a specific day of voting left to be scheduled. Dave Brat’s defeat of Eric Cantor destroyed the whip count. From the documentary, “Only a handful of people know how close we were.”
“Adjusting buoy data to match engine intake temperature data, rather than the other way around, in ERSST v4 seems somewhat questionable as engine intake temperature is not exactly a gold standard for sea surface temperature.”
True, but it should make no difference as we care only about slope.
“But the goal of the paper was to debunk the ‘pause’ just before the Paris climate summit.”
Et tu, DeWitt?
The big scandal of the Daily Mail article was Rose’s dishonest (or ignorant) use of different baselines for NOAA and Hadley data to make the false claim that NOAA had cheated to produce higher values.
Tom Scharf — Frontline,
I am pretty sure that Frontline did a film on the Clintons a good while back that documented corrupt dealings. Near the end of the film, it showed that to avoid responsibility for their, (at least unethical behavior), the Clintons (or possibly just Bill) engineered the purchase of a natural gas company (which I believe was the party injured by the unethical actions). It was both very discouraging and very funny at the same time that such creative skullduggery could be used as a cover-up. If anyone has a link to this film, I would appreciate its posting. Will take a look at the more recent Frontline work.
JD
The WaPo has perhaps coined a new word: globaloney.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/03/globaloney/?utm_term=.627a6aaa88fd
Lucia,
“It’s one thing to help out the truly needy older people. But massive transfers of wealth from 20-30 year olds to the elderly are a terrible economic choice and stupendously unfair. (I realize the elderly like it. So do some approaching elderly. But it’s remains unfair.)”
I disagree. Health insurance groups set up for companies do the very thing you describe above. Everyone in the group must enroll and pay the same price (from age 20 to age 70), thereby averaging the risk across the entire population of the group. Young pay more and the old pay less than individual risk would dictate. And it is fair, because the young become older and are increasingly supported by new, incoming younger people.
I think Obamacare had that aspect (averaging risk) exactly right, but had to use a heavy handed approach to make it work. Medicare for all would solve such a problems and get life-saving medical care for all.
Owen,
The 75 year unfunded liability for Medicare in 2015 was $37 trillion. Somehow I don’t think that putting everyone on Medicare would help with that problem, even given the increased income stream from applying all current medical insurance payments to Medicare. People who don’t currently have insurance because they can’t afford it won’t be able to afford the increased taxes either.
Owen: “Health insurance groups set up for companies do the very thing you describe above. Everyone in the group must enroll and pay the same price (from age 20 to age 70), thereby averaging the risk across the entire population of the group. Young pay more and the old pay less than individual risk would dictate.”
….
This is companies who, because they employ working people would tend to have younger and healthier people than the population as a whole. For a long time before Obamacare, I paid for my own individual health insurance. The way it worked was that I was put into a group with defined parameters where at some time no new members were admitted. After 5 or 7 years, the costs would sky rocket, and I would have to move to a new group. The use of company-paid health insurance is a bad example.
….
I have the misfortune of having Obamacare and it is screwed up beyond belief. I have 4 policies (including a dough nut hole policy). The stupid premise behind Obamacare is that very complicated policies could be created and that people would somehow make the right choices. I, as someone who practiced workers’ compensation law for 17 years, with a fair amount of effort could figure out what is going on. Instead, I rely on my insurance agent. The average person has zero chance.
….
A couple of examples, of many I could give. I was going to choose one policy whose coverage and price seemed better than the others. Luckily, I was working with a very skilled health insurance agent. He told me that “yes, the policy did have some advantages, but that if I traveled, it was very poor.” [I do in fact, travel a lot] Additionally, I had to buy a policy for my children. The Obamacare website was screwed up and I had to buy individual policies for my two children. That was bad enough, but now because I have 2 separate policies, I have no way to register for the insurance carrier’s website to pay my bills. Of course, I tried to call the tech section of the company today, and they had me on hold for 45 minutes before I gave up.
JD
Owen,
That’s one graphic in the article that’s indeed dodgy. The question, however, is still whether the rate of change of temperature in ERSST v5 will be the same as or lower than ERSST v4.
DeWitt,
ERsst v5 expected to be lower than v4. See https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-mail-sundays-astonishing-evidence-global-temperature-rise
“NOAA is planning on further updates to their sea surface temperature record this year to incorporate Argo data and to make some adjustments to their spatial interpolation technique. Based on the preliminary results that their team presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting late last year, their new record (ERSSTv5) will have about 10% less warming than their current record (ERSSTv4) over the 2000-2015 period, largely due to changes in the way that they account for areas with limited data. Their upcoming record will still show 50% more warming than the old NOAA record (ERSSTv3b).”
DeWitt,
“The 75 year unfunded liability for Medicare in 2015 was $37 trillion.”
That’s a big number – bigger than our entire national debt by a factor of two.
JD,
I was not defending Obamacare per se, but I was defending the notion of shared (averaged) risk in health care.
I defer to your experience with Obamacare and I’m sure I would be just as frustrated as you with the issues you describe.
Owen,
Yes it is a very big number, but I have actually seen somewhat higher figures. Of course, any such long term projection is somewhat uncertain. What is not uncertain is that the cost for future benefits will require a steep increase in taxes…. unless there is a substantial reduction in benefits.
SteveF,
I have no idea what that number might include – health care for the next 50 years? I looked up total medicare expenditures for 2015 – was ~600 billion.
Owen,
In the past a young healthy person could purchase a simple policy to protect against catastrophic events. Not any more. I would also point out that many high risk (and high cost) people fall into that category because of unwise personal behavior (overeating, exessive alcohol consumption, smoking, etc). I think a fair argument can be made that people who are more careful ought not be forced to subsidize foolish people. When unwise behaviour is divorced from it’s financial consequences, you tend to get more unwise behavior.
SteveF,
Anyway, I gave a talk to a local discussion group in 2009, just before the Obamacare rollout. The figure that struck me was the average medical cost for the average 80 year old – ~$35,000 per year. People retire at 65, often from company plans leaving the government to cover the hyper expensive elderly. If the elderly had to pay based on risk, no one over 65 could afford health insurance
Owen,
I believe that number is the difference between the projected cost of benefits (I think out 75 years) less the projected Medicare tax take over the same period. The baby boom bulge will drive up costs for the next 15 or so years.
SteveF,
See: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-in-healthcare-charts/#1419356e458f
See the graph entitled :Annual Per Capita HealthCare Costs by Age.
Note the corresponding costs in other countries
Owen,
As I’ve pointed out before, we’re less healthy on average than other developed countries. The incidence of diabetes, types I and II combined, for example, is 10.8% for ages 20 to 79 in the US. In Germany, it’s 7.4%. In the UK, it’s 4.7%. Not coincidentally, the incidence of obesity (BMI > 30) in the US is 33.7%, the highest in the developed world. In Germany, it’s 20%. The UK is 28%. We have the third highest death rate from drug use in the world, 7/100,000. The UK is less than 4 and Germany is 1.34.
I’m sure there’s lots more. We’re not very healthy and we can and do spend lots of money when we’re sick, particularly in the last year of life.
Owen (Comment #158620)
February 6th, 2017 at 7:15 pm
Lucia,
“It’s one thing to help out the truly needy older people. But massive transfers of wealth from 20-30 year olds to the elderly are a terrible economic choice and stupendously unfair. (I realize the elderly like it. So do some approaching elderly. But it’s remains unfair.)â€
I disagree…
________
Owen, I may disagree with Lucia on this too. The 20-30 year olds have been benefitting from things paid for by the elderly. By the time a person becomes an adult, he is indebted not only to his parents and grandparents, but to the older population in general for schools, roads,etc. I don’t know the size of this debt, but if it’s as large as the
“transfers of wealth from 20-30 year olds to the elderly,” then I would say the transfer is fair.
Max_OK,
That might be true if the infrastructure they inherit had actually been 100% paid for. But it wasn’t The young also inherit the national debt. That was fine when it was small compared to the GDP and the GDP was growing fast enough to keep it small. With Quantitative Easing and other deficit spending, that may no longer true, especially if interest rates start going up.
Max, wouldn’t the elderly have gotten the same benefits when they were younger?
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158619)
February 6th, 2017 at 7:11 pm
The WaPo has perhaps coined a new word: globaloney.
Is America enriching the world at its own expense? That’s globaloney.
______
DeWitt, thank you for the WoPo link. I’m not surprised if many or even most Americans have an exaggerated notion of globalization.
It goes with the exaggerated notion of the threat of Islamic terrorism in America. Since 9/11/2001 when terrorists killed 3,000 in American, there have been few additional victims within our borders, but about 550,000 have been killed in motor vehicle accidents.
I wonder if any surveys have compared the public’s fear of the two?
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158635)
February 6th, 2017 at 10:53 pm
Max_OK,
The 20-30 year olds have been benefitting from things paid for by the elderly.
That might be true if the infrastructure they inherit had actually been 100% paid for. But it wasn’t The young also inherit the national debt.
_______
We should take that into consideration too.
Before deciding whether policies are unfair to young people, the elderly, or any particular age group, I believe we should take
everything into consideration.
MikeN (Comment #158636)
February 6th, 2017 at 10:57 pm
Max, wouldn’t the elderly have gotten the same benefits when they were younger?
____
Yes, benefits but I don’t know if they were the “same.” Going back through generations, I would expect less benefits (e.g.,my grandparents had less educational opportunity than my parents).
Owen,
That graph says many things, but more important are the things it does not say. Health care costs could be drastically reduced by instituting a ‘single payer’ system, which essentially rations care and limits care providers’ income. Health care costs could be drastically reduced by limiting benefits for terminal conditions… the illnesses which put most lifetime healthcare costs in the last few years of life for most people…. with little impact on longevity or quality of life, and indeed, seem too often to prolong life at the cost of cruel suffering. If there is no connection between who pays for and who benefits from medical care (as is the case for most US health care) then cost expands without limit. The alternatives are to ration care by law, or make sure patients and their families have ‘skin in the game’. Right now we do neither.
“Health care costs could be drastically reduced by limiting benefits for terminal conditions… the illnesses which put most lifetime healthcare costs in the last few years of life for most people…. with little impact on longevity or quality of life, and indeed, seem too often to prolong life at the cost of cruel suffering.”
I agree 100% (but isn’t that rationing care? death panels?). New medical technologies and drugs are also driving up costs – knee, hip, shoulder replacements, etc. Which of us older people will forego which of the new treatments?
I’m all for skin in the game for everyone – and I am for a rational rationing of care as well.
I think this is interesting:
The 20-30 year olds pay taxes too. In that sense they are paying for these things that they are benefiting from, same as the elderly did. Or are we talking about them benefiting as children? (rhetorical in the sense that I think it’s a silly question) I think the parents pay taxes on behalf of the kids; the kids don’t ‘owe’ the elderly for that.
(This reminds me of the Barack Obama ‘you didn’t build that’ argument. It seems that living in a society where people pay for things with taxes can be construed to mean anybody owes everybody. I don’t buy this.)
[Edit: By the time a person becomes an adult, he is indebted not only to his parents and grandparents I see that yes, the argument is that they are ‘in debt’ for the taxes they didn’t have to pay as children. Heh. If my kids ‘owe’ me (and maybe an argument can be made that they do) we can settle the debt privately. The lions share of the debt they owe would be to their parents, not to the taxpayers. I’ll forgive that debt privately. They don’t owe everybody who paid taxes while they were children, I think that’s loony.]
I stray from my main point, however. Given the high cost of medical care for the elderly, we need to find ways to average risk across the full population.
Paul Ryan’s plans to replace Medicare with “premium support” goes in the opposite direction – making each age group its own risk pool.
mark bofill
I would have used the adjective “ridiculous”.
In my view:
(A) Parents owe their children a decent education, food and so on from the time those parents bring their kids into the world. The kids do not subsequently owe the entire generation of their parents for all those things. I consider any claim they do simply ridiculous.
(B) People who are currently building roads are building them for ourselves and we benefit from them right now. Future generations do not “owe” our generation for these roads. This works backwards too. My generation does not “owe” the previous generation for roads.
(C) In anycase, the current generation of elderly continue to benefit from the roads that currently exist– and from hospitals staffed by the young, and by welfare paid for by the young, and by the military currently manned by the young and so on and new roads being built and roads paid for by the young. So even if one wanted to someone call the work done in the past as a debt owed by the young to the old it is already being paid for by the young paying for current roads, schools and so on. It doesn’t become fair to heap an additional “youth tax”, on the young to transfer to the elderly.
So my response to the bald assertion that the 20-30 year olds “owe” that to the previous generation is simply: “No. They don’t.” And further more this does not represent a “transfer of wealth” from the old to the young. Setting the “zero” transfer of wealth from the old to the young can hardly claimed to “balance” the forced balance of actual current wealth from the young to the old.
Owen,
The new biologic drugs are indeed expensive. But if you can, for example, cure hepatitis C rather than transplanting a liver, I believe the overall cost goes down. Also, drugs are only a relatively small part of overall health care costs. According to the CDC, in 2014, prescription drugs were ~12% of national health expenditures. The biggies are hospital care, 37.9%, and professional services, 31.3%.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#094
SteveF
I prefer the latter. My understanding is many single payer countries do the former– ration care. That’s why our care costs sky rocket for people over 60 and don’t in other nations.
It is simply unfair to burden young people with these costs.
Thanks Lucia.
For what it’s worth, this is should be the image in the link Owne posted
It is utterly unfair to burden 20 year olds with the costs of retired elderly who have made it to 71 and older. And no it is not true that those 20 year olds would have been paying it through their employer. Those 71 year olds– especially the ill ones, have retired. For that matter: those with failing health tend to retire earlier not later. So the notion that the extremely ill 60 year olds are getting health care through their employer: statistically generally no.
It is much better to let people make choices for themselves that force them to sacrifice their youth, their ability to raise families to buy houses and so on for the notion that either current 80 yo or the young people future selves must be forced to pick health care over other very important items like education, family and so on.
Owen
Nonesense.
We need to ensure people — including those who are ill– have skin in the game so they make choices that are economically reasonable. That’s the only way to get those costs down.
We need to create options to encourage people to save for themselves. And if they don’t recognize that those people thought other things– like housing, education and etc in their youth– were more important than extremely expensive health care choices in when they were old.
We do not need a system that forces everyone in the country to pick “health care in old age” over “housing, education, marriage, children” in their youth.
Which is better. This means people of all ages can protect against things that are actual risks and pay in proportion to their risk.
There also seem to be charts out there which show the medical cost incurred by 80 year olds at $12k to $15k/year. It would be good to know how the $35k figure is compiled.
The $12 to $15k was about what my parents each ran in their late 80s. It didn’t go off the chart until the 24/7 caregivers appeared in last 6 months of their lives. And they are not paid for by medicare.
Lucia,
When I started teaching I had to join my college’s health insurance program and pay for my wife and family. I paid what even the oldest paid, but didn’t forego a house, education, etc. It was a wonderful program and fair to all.
Your libertarian, every person for themselves, approach would be wonderful for the younger but catastrophically expensive for retirees. Even now, with Medicare my wife and I pay monthly medicare ($270), supplemental ($380), and part D ($90) – almost $9K a year for insurance/drugs- that’s skin in the game. Without Medicare I would estimate that we would pay 4-6 times that based on graph above.
Owen
The oldest on the teaching staff weren’t 80. Likely very few were 70 or even 60. Teachers tend to retire before that. (My mother was a chemistry teacher.)
Yes. Because medical costs had not yet escalated due to near universal coverage with low deducitables covering anything and everything.
It should be more expensive for retirees. And for what it’s worth: deductables are skin in the game. Forcing people to choose things.
Yes. And in my view, you should pay more than you do. You should carry your own weight not shift a huge amount onto the young as you currently do.
Owen,
I remember Popsie-Wopsie used to laugh at his neighbors in the retirement village he lived in in Sarasota. He said many would go to the pool everyday and complain about how much their prescriptions cost and how that should be picked up by the government. Meanwhile, these particular people went out to eat at restaurants several times a week, owned a summer and winter home and also went to what amounted to theater in the Sarasota area quite regularly. All owned and drove their own cars, took vacations to visit their kids– air fair, yep– with regularlty.
Sory, but it would not be fair to tax the young to cover these people’s meds on the principle that for some utterly mysterious reason “medical” bills should be average for everyone. Sorry: but no.
It’s one thing to have a program that covers costs for people who really can’t afford it when they do run out of money. But these people hadn’t run out of money. They weren’t remotely close to running out of money. I don’t see any reason they couldn’t have paid for their own meds– the fact that they might have had to eat at home or eventually sell one or possibly both of their homes– oh. well. That’s a choice.
lucia & Owen—part of the difference is how much worse our elderly care is compared to other countries. Many of them end up in nursing homes where they are basically kept in little boxes with no stimulation. In turn, the nursing homes dump them on the hospitals when they get ill (extended stays in hospitals is very expensive of course).
Carrick,
Yes. And our system is organized to encourage that bad expensive elderly care. Shifting the cost of poorly designed overly expensive care onto young people is not going to fix that.
Cost sharing based on their own age groups need is– I think– more likely to focus people who are aging (way in my age group) or those who need to figure out how to help their older relative on fixing the problem. Shifting the costs on 20 year olds? Not so much.
Max_OK,
“Since 9/11/2001 when terrorists killed 3,000 in American, there have been few additional victims within our borders”
.
I always laugh when people use the “since 2001” metric when talking about terrorism statistics. At least you were kind enough to acknowledge that 3000 people died on that day which many don’t.
.
People do overestimate the threat from terror, but there are a couple points here:
1. Cars aren’t actively plotting to kill you. It’s psychological.
2. In this case it is the Black Swan events that matter the most. We need to stop mass causality events if we can.
.
I would say almost all people who were adults during 9/11 were pretty much emotionally traumatized by the event. When I saw a bunch of overtly sympathetic pictures of Muslims in airports recently I was thinking “You might want to pair those up with video of people jumping out of 100 story buildings or ISIS videos” for a little balance.
.
92% of Republicans and 82% of Democrats considered terrorism a high priority this election cycle. It’s shared cognitive bias. I don’t think immigration bans are going to make a dent in terrorism but people shouldn’t pretend the terrorism threat doesn’t exist either.
.
Almost everyone agrees on tough thorough vetting from terrorism hot spots so this latest fury is yet another loud and pointless proxy fight over the election IMO.
SteveF: “The alternatives are to ration care by law, or make sure patients and their families have ‘skin in the game’. Right now we do neither.”
.
That is a big part of why our healthcare is so expensive. We combine many of the worst features of a market with the worst features of centralized control. I think we should move more toward individuals directly paying more of their costs. I used to live in Canada, so I have seen the other solution, and I don’t think that is a wise way to go.
.
Owen: “Even now, with Medicare my wife and I pay monthly medicare ($270), supplemental ($380), and part D ($90) – almost $9K a year for insurance/drugs- that’s skin in the game. ”
.
Sounds to me like you don’t have skin in the game, at least if that means, as I think it does, individuals directly paying more of the cost of treatments chosen. Insurance insulates you from the treatment costs and leads to poor cost control.
“And in my view, you should pay more than you do. You should carry your own weight not shift a huge amount onto the young as you currently do.”
When young, I paid in more in my insurance group than my risk warranted. When young I paid in Medicare taxes every month. Understand I am not complaining about what I pay and I am thankful that we have Medicare. Few, however, could afford insurance in the absence of Medicare.
.
This is true and relevant, terror works by the emotion of terror, not the rational assessment of risk.
.
However, this is also incomplete.
.
Flight 93 was intended either for the White House or Congress. There is a long chain of succession for the president. At the time, there was not a succession plan for Congress. Is there one now? I’m not sure.
.
What would happen if the majority of Congress were killed? martial law? If so, how long would it last? Would the lack of confidence lead to economic collapse? Would we ever return to constitutional law?
.
Terror in general is an irrational response. Terror in specific is quite rational ( were we unfortunate enough to be in the Orlando massacre, fear of the real and imminent threat would be quite normal, and to the extent that fear helped us fight or flee, it would be helpfull ). But it is not the personal risk of death that makes jihad a rationally assessable threat. Rather, it is the intent and motivation of jihadists to defeat secular government that makes it a threat. Car accidents do kill many more, but they are more random and are not motivated to end US government and society.
lucia (Comment #158649),
What is the source of that figure? When I see a divergence like that, I become very suspicious as to whether it is an apples-to-apples comparison.
.
Medicare spending per capita peaks at age 96 at about $16 K per year, about double that for age 70. http://kff.org/medicare/report/the-rising-cost-of-living-longer-analysis-of-medicare-spending-by-age-for-beneficiaries-in-traditional-medicare/
So the very high numbers in your graph must be due to nursing homes and other round-the-clock care. That is not paid by tax dollars, except for the indigent. And I wonder if it is included in the numbers for the other countries.
.
So, only somewhat rhetorically, would insurance be more affordable if Medicare didn’t exist?
.
The general rule in economics is that if you subsidize something, it becomes more expensive. That certainly happened with the few years of ACA.
.
I’m not arguing against MC, and free market enterprise evidently conflicts with our humanitarian instincts toward medical care.
.
But philosophically, things are probably more expensive because of our programs.
“Sory, but it would not be fair to tax the young to cover these people’s meds on the principle that for some utterly mysterious reason “medical†bills should be average for everyone. Sorry: but no.”
OK, I see where you are coming from. Would risk sharing be more palatable if the Medicare tax were gradual, starting quite low for people in their 20’s and reaching a crescendo in the 50’s and 60’s?
Owen
Possibly. But that’s not a good reason to continue the injustice of making young people pay for the old. And the injustice is greater now because the demographics have changed. You didn’t pay for as many old people relative to you when you were young.
Once again: Sure. But that’s also not a reason old folks who can afford insurance should shift the cost to the young especially given demographic changes.
Perhaps if your generation had been wiser, they would have anticipated the inevitable injustice of shifting the burden of supporting their future old selves on a smaller number of young people. But sadly, they weren’t.
(And btw. I’m 57 yo. So I wasn’t able to get this change either. But… alas.)
That said: the folly of those currently in their 50s-100s is not a good reason to heap this injustices on those who were younger and who had little or no say in the decision to have the cost our generations care dumped on them.
I should jolly well hope you aren’t complaining. Your costs are being shifted to others. You should be grateful for the system currently benefits you. But that you are not complaining is hardly sufficient reason to make forcing them to pay to cover your costs “just”.
Beyond that, define “afford”. Please.
My mother insists she could not “afford” medical care and that her life would be a “catastrophe” were it not for her getting social security, old age waivers on real estate taxes for the 4 bedroom house in which she continues to live and so on. Yet she takes at least two $3000 vacations a year. And she hasn’t made plans to sell the house and move into someplace less expensive.
That’s fine: She can afford to maintain her style of living. But I have to tell you: she has a funny definition of “can’t afford”– as do many people. Quite a few people seem to think medical care should be just as free to them as air (with costs carried by others).
Yet somehow they accept that we do pay for food and water.
There is no objective reason for this notion.
The fact is, my mom and many people define “can’t afford” to mean “I would need to give up discretionary expenditures which in many cases are what the people being taxed to pay my bills would dream of affording.”
I’d be happy to cover people who really can’t afford their medical bills — with “can’t afford” meaning otherwise couldn’t find a decent 1 bedroom apartment with heat, eat, cloth themselves and basically cover necessities.
But unless you’ll need to clarify what you mean by “can’t afford” the claim that the elderly “can’t afford” their medical claim doesn’t mean anything. Because if it means, “It would cut into my discretionary spending”…. — which is what it often means when people say it– then sorry, no. That’s not “can’t afford.”
Eddie,
“So, only somewhat rhetorically, would insurance be more affordable if Medicare didn’t exist?”
Tom Price has suggested doing away with employers providing insurance and moving toward all people buying insurance individually on the open market. See: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/tom-price-employer-heath-plans
From that article:
“The idea is that, by having more people choosing their own plans — and by having insurers freed of many of the ACA’s regulations — younger and healthier people will be able to get cheaper, but skimpier plans.
Part of the point, according to Antos, is “to really get consumer involvement” in selecting health care plans, as opposed to their employers. That, in turn, sends “the message to insurance companies about what’s a good plan, what’s not a good plan.”
However, that approach comes with its downsides. With younger and healthier people shifting to more meager plans, the risk pools for people who need more comprehensive care — the older and the sicker — decrease in size while growing in average cost. For them, Price proposes a high-risk pool set-up by the states, though the amount of federal money he’s willing to invest in them is dwarfed by what it’s expected they’d cost.”
I firmly oppose such an approach as it moves away from risk sharing.
Owen:
Taxes are taxes. I’m fine with taxes being assessed evenly. That’s not “insurance”.
What would be more palatable to me is if benefits for Medicare were lowered or limited to those with lower incomes and less personal wealth. People who wanted more policies to cover health care could then purchase. Or they could pay out of pocket. If they really became poor, they the program would cover them.
There is plenty of inequity in the present system. Medicare paid for all sorts of expenses my parents incurred after 85. Cataract surgery for my mom for example. There was no means test whatever and they could have easily afforded to pay for everything that was done for/to them in the last 10 years. Instead, the money they should have spent themselves was distributed to the kids – in their 60s-70s.
I suppose you could say that they were harvesting the insurance that they had paid into all of those years, but still…
.
I don’t know how this idea will fly with those who read here, but rather than have the mandate, perhaps universal healthcare should be single sourced and paid out of general revenue. Obviously taxes would have to go up.
.
I’m hoping that Trump will get to fixing our tax system after he’s worn himself out filtering the bad hombres out of our immigrant stream.
.
The French tax some kinds of personal capital over $1.5E (+/-). It might be something to look at here.
MikeM
Owen’s like was
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-in-healthcare-charts/#1c0b937a458f
*Imputed supervisory care could be potentially expandable.
*Out-of-pocket for “professional services” is also a potentially expandable item.
You would need to look at the underlying Deloitte study to figure that out– I get a 404 when I click the link. (For example: I have no idea if house-keeping and cooking for my elderly inlaws when they stayed at the Devonshire is “professional care”. )
Carrick (Comment #158655): “part of the difference is how much worse our elderly care is compared to other countries. Many of them end up in nursing homes …”
.
Can you provide justification for that claim? About 4% of elderly Americans are in nursing homes. So far as I can tell, that is similar to other industrial countries.
Lucia,
‘But unless you’ll need to clarify what you mean by “can’t afford†the claim that the elderly “can’t afford†their medical claim doesn’t mean anything. Because if it means, “It would cut into my discretionary spendingâ€â€¦. — which is what it often means when people say it– then sorry, no. That’s not “can’t afford.—
If Medicare did not exist and people >65 YO comprised one insurance pool, and the above graph is reasonably accurate on average annual costs, I would expect health insurance for this pool to be in ther range of $35,000 per year (since the ave cost for the pool is ~$28,000 and the insurance must be greater than the ave cost). The median income in 2013 for retired people was $35,107. See: http://www.interest.com/savings/news/2013-retirement-income-study/
That’s what I mean by “can’t afford”
j ferguson
Yes. And sometimes “can’t afford” means it will cut into my “dream” of leaving money in my will. There is an industry of people who advise the elderly how to organize their estate to access the maximum from Medicare while preserving their estate to pass on in their will.
Obviously, those who are left the money are glad to have it. But this doesn’t make it “just” to transfer money from the young to the old.
Owen,
“Skin in the game” means that your costs are connected to your treatment choices; if you have fixed monthly payments which are completely independent of treatment (eg Medicare), then you have no motivation to control treatment costs…. only the very best treatment will do for you, and damn the cost.
.
Countries with much lower health care costs (especially in old age) control cost by limiting care (directly or indirectly). For example, the last I knew, the UK health system allowed one internal examination (at about age 60) for colorectal cancer. More examinations (at later ages) are deemed not to be cost effective. And they probably aren’t effective if you compare cost to societal benefits…. but if someone else is paying, well… different story. Of course, people can always elect to pay for more examinations out of pocket, but most are unwilling to pay…. so lower total health care cost.
.
As I said earlier, there are really only a couple of ways to control health care costs, and we are not doing any of those things. Controlling health care costs requires an honest (non-politicized!) discussion of costs, benefits, and financial incentives for individuals, but most of all, politicians willing to be honest with their constituents and take the heat for some difficult policy choices. So long as politicians act as if access to unlimited, even ‘heroic’, health care is (or should be) a “right”, like free speech, there will be no control of growing costs.
Lucia,
I couldn’t agree more. One of the schemes which was presented to us when they were in their mid 80s was for them to give almost everything to the heirs so that they would find themselves below the Medicaid threshold and live out their lives at the expense of the state.
There is apparently a 5 year recapture window for the government to thwart this idea if it’s done intentionally. I’m not sure because we would never have considered such a thing. We do have distant relatives who did this and their Dad lived in nursing for 15 years at the expense of the rest of us.
I can’t remember who proposed the idea to us, but it was one of those things that start with “Of course you are going to drain their estate while you can.”
I suspect that the people who would do this would assist in suicide if it wasn’t possible to do the above. I’m delighted to find that I completely agree with hunter’s view on this prospect. It’s good to find agreement once in a while.
Owen, things are multifactoral, for sure.
.
But we cannot repeal the laws of economics.
.
The less that market choices can apply, the less the cost will reflect actual value.
.
As for employer sponsored plans, that is what got us into this mess to begin with. During WWII, the government imposed wage freezes. Employers got around this by offering fringe benefits including health insurance. But with this came distortions – consumers were separated from the cost of insurance – and it has been a backdoor subsidy because insurance comes out pre-tax.
.
Throw in the anti-trust exemption and the system is almost designed to raise prices – and it has.
.
Do also reflect that high prices also deny healtcare.
.
The whole thing does raise all the problems with socialism.
.
Why should I pay for the health care of a society that smokes, drinks, and eats too much?
.
If I pay, then I’ll want the snack food secret police to smack twinkies out of the would be health tax recipients hands.
.
Neither of these outcomes, social taxes or secret police, are in the spirit of liberty which underlies this country.
Owen,
Providing median income is not giving the definition of “afford”. Besides which, it appears to me that a couple with a “medium income” could perfectly well “afford” to cover the medicare costs you and your wife currently have– and then some.
You wrote
I don’t know what state you are in. But even assuming the numbers at your links are accurate, it appears the elderly can afford to pay much more than you and your wife pay for Medicare. Suppose you are in Illinois:
According to hat page, the median income for a retired individual would be $35,370. You and your wife constitute two individuals, $9 K out of that would be 25% That’s a big bite but someone who no longer needs to save for retirement, pay for kids bills, save for college and so on. And unlike food, shelter or clothes its tax deductable.
So they couple would still have 17370 /yr before taxes– that’s above the poverty level for a couple. Most people — especially those who own a home and no longer pay rent and/or can draw down on their saveings– ought to be able to manage that. And they ought to be able to do it whether or not a “financial adviser” somehow told you that you couldn’t do so because you used to have a higher income when you were working.
You probably don’t want to to live on that. But a couple who made “median income” could still have a decent place to live, food to eat, heat, clothing and so on. I’m not seeing “they can’t afford medical care” as a reason why the cost for all elderly– including people whom make more than the median income– should be shifted from the young.
Beyond that: Are you willing to limit medicare benefits to those who make less than the median income? Or to have any sort of adjustment for benefits or costs for coverage based on income? For example: If someone makes more than $70 K, would you be willing to increase how much they pay for medicare relative to someone who makes $35K? Real questions which cut to whether the issue is or is not whether someone can “afford” to pay.
Owen,
“If Medicare did not exist and people >65 YO comprised one insurance pool, and the above graph is reasonably accurate on average annual costs, I would expect health insurance for this pool to be in the range of $35,000 per year (since the ave cost for the pool is ~$28,000 and the insurance must be greater than the ave cost). The median income in 2013 for retired people was $35,107.”
.
Sure, but that doesn’t address the real issues. almost nobody in that age group would ever actually spend that much money for health insurance, even if they could afford it. Your nifty graphic of cost versus age does not explain the structure of the costs: People who are near the end of life (independent of age at death) are the dominant cost for all elderly people. That is, as a society, we invest a huge fraction of lifetime total health care expenditures in the last year or two of life. Is that a prudent course for society? I argue that it is not.
.
If heroic efforts to extend life by a year meant spending most/all of an individual’s lifetime accumulated assets, I rather suspect that many people would opt out of heroic efforts; I certainly would. It is the disconnect of costs from benefits that queers the whole health care system in the States.
SteveF
My mom is 84 yo and still getting colonoscopies like clockwork. Sure, they might detect something small that could grow and would eventually kill her before she turns 100 yo. Or something else will kill her.
The care facility where Rosemary lived in her last years had a doctor do ‘regular services’– which were good, but often not something anyone would pay for.
For example: regular eye exams and glasses– covered by Medicare. That sounds great, but really…her main problem with not reading was she no longer had sufficient memory to remember what she’d read 2 minute ago. And since she only ever needed them for reading, they were inevitably lost. No family would have paid out of pocket for these. Mind you: it was a modest cost relative to other things, but it’s in that category of costs that individuals are well able to judge not worth the money. (FWIW: even though these were free, we declined things because Rosemary didn’t react well to the exams or change of any sort. Now, if we couldn’t have been given boxes of chocolate of value similar to the glasses, we would have taken that. She loved chocolate and we brought her a bar every time we visited. The woman at the convenience store even recognized us.)
SteveF
Most people would opt out.
What many people do instead is find an “expert” who advises them how to cordon off their assets so they “don’t count” for various federal benefits (VA, Medicare, Medicaid whatever.) Then those moneys are left to their heirs, and the elderly get the “minimum” that is available on these other programs. This is still often more than they would have spent had it come out of pocket.
J ferguson
A high school boyfriend works at a retirement/ageing type place. He says lots of people do this. Lots. And he reports that dealing with families where it has been done is hell. The ‘heirs’ generally can’t agree on anything– family drama, family drama….
Lucia,
Those were household incomes in the link.
In the case of myself and my wife, the ~9K we paid does not begin to describe our medical expenses. I am a lifelong runner, I eat well, exercise 4×1 hr per week, no smoking, etc. Still in the past 4-5 years: hernia repair surgery, rotator cuff surgery, in hospital for atrial fibrulation, long-term PT for shoulder (all paid for by medicare). Without Medicare, well over $100K. My wife, in the same period had three major surgeries – two life-threatening and one elective knee replacement so she could walk without pain. Another well-over $100K. We are in our early 70’s.
Insurance is protection against extreme costs and no one should go without that. I am more than willing to consider means-testing to reduce costs, but not to forego the protection of insurance.
Owen,
Yes. I removed and corrected. But you’ll see the numbers still indicate the insurance fees twice what you and your wife pay are certainly affordable to those with median incomes.
You’ve needed lots of care and have certainly done well out of Medicare. I’m not seeing how this means you couldn’t easily pay 2-4 times what you do for Medicare. It looks like it would have remained a good deal for you.
Yes. That’s prudent. But it seems to me you in particular ought to be willing to pay four times what you do for medicare premiums and medicare supplements–especially considering how many surgeries you seem to have required.
My mother is 80. Her major medical in her life have been:
1) giving birth 4 times.
2) broke her wrist.
3) the rest are all routine things– like colonoscopies and exams.
I wouldn’t advise her to forgo insurance for accidents our unforseen illness.
Given your ages it does make sense for you and my mom to be in the same risk pool for accidents like tearing your rotator cuff. But it makes no sense for you to use your experience as a reason why young people should be required to subsidize the old.
Glad to hear your open to means testing for coverage. I’m both for means testing and risk pools that include features that strongly predict risk: age is one of them.
Owen
BTW: I note:
But you didn’t pay $100K. You paid Medicare premiums instead. You can’t count both as your expenses.
Also: paid by Medicare.
So it seems to me you should be happy to pay 4 times what you do for Medicare. And none of this is an argument that the costs of your premiums should be lowered or shifted to the young.
I question that anyone here doesn’t think insurance is a great idea. For my part though, I’d rather handle insurance through the market than government programs. Not to say the government can’t provide a safety net, but it ought to be a safety net, not the healthcare system. But that’s just reactionary me. 🙂
[Edit: Off topic, Betsy DeVos has been confirmed. Took Pence’s tiebreaker vote to do it.]
Mark bofill
Precisely. And the law should allow insurance companies to over policies that range from “bare bones catastrophic” to “wellness maintenance plans” that cover routine care including annual physicals, eyeglasses and so on. People can pick which they want.
Regulation is required to make sure the insurance plans have reserves to pay out when the accidents occur and so on. But I don’t think this full control dictating what sorts of plans are allowed and insisting people buy them makes any sense.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think people should purchase them– health insurance, home owners insurance and so on are prudent things to have.
Lucia,
Yes. I feel like the question often boils down to this in some way in the end: how free should we be to make our own decisions, be they good or bad. How much should the government dictate.
.
Let me buy my own insurance. If I skimp on it, don’t spend much in the way of public funds to save my sorry butt. I’m good with it. OTOH, if I really really care and I want to live as long as I can, I can sacrifice things in my life to pay for more insurance. I can make healthy choices and stay in shape. I can save for it in MSA’s, so on. The best way to tailor the system for everybody is market options, not some government behemoth (and yes, I agree with you that some regulation is always required).
.
Sure I think it’s a good idea. Let people make up their own darn minds though, if and how much.
Lucia,
“But you didn’t pay $100K. You paid Medicare premiums instead. You can’t count both as your expenses.”
I wasn’t counting it twice, I was responding to your question to me asking: “Are you willing to limit medicare benefits to those who make less than the median income? ”
My answer is no, for the reasons I cited – we had five-year expenses of ~$250-300K (not including any Medicare/insurance premiums) in the absence of Medicare.
“I am more than willing to consider means-testing to reduce costs”
.
This always triggers me because it is a “punish the responsible” mentality. It reminds me of the real estate crisis here in FL where people took questionable loans, bought a house they couldn’t really afford, refinanced it in good times and took the cash, stopped paying for it when the crisis hit, and continued to live in the house an average of two years without making payments before finally being evicted by the evil predatory banks.
.
Then it all plays out that they are the “victims”. Debt forgiveness, principal write downs, Hmmmmm. Justice!
.
Moral hazards are real and need to be respected a little more. Instead of means testing for coverage it would be less objectionable to instead raise the limits for Medicare tax for the payers.
Tom,
You can’t use the phrase ‘that triggers me’ and speak sense at the same time.
Well you can, but you’ll cause people cognitive dissonance. Just saying. :p
[forgot the explicit silly tag. / silly]
Mark Bofill,
“The best way to tailor the system for everybody is market options, not some government behemoth”
The Canadians who have real-life experience with “some government behemoth” do not agree: https://www.healthcare-now.org/blog/new-poll-shows-canadians-overwhelmingly-support-public-health-care/
From the article: “A new poll conducted by the Toronto-based Nanos Research points to overwhelming support — 86.2 percent — for strengthening public health care rather than expanding for-profit services.”
Lucia, I doubt that their younger workers feel all that put-upon.
Owen,
I’m sure that’s so. We can agree that Canadians overwhelmingly disagree with me. What of it? (real question)
.
I imagine half the world or more disagrees with me. There might even be a 97% consensus out there [disagreeing with me] for all I know.
Tom,
“Instead of means testing for coverage it would be less objectionable to instead raise the limits for Medicare tax for the payers.”
Amen.
Mark,
“We can agree that Canadians overwhelmingly disagree with me. What of it? (real question)”
Their disagreement is based on 32 years of actual experience in successfully delivering health care (as opposed to theories about the efficacy of possible market solutions).
Owen,
.
This is getting silly. Surely you do not expect me to say ‘oh. Well, if the Canadians think it’s the right answer, and since the Canadians have been doing this for thirty-two years they must know of what they speak, I’m going to therefore abandon the free market and become a socialist.’
.
Obviously you don’t expect that. So. I’m at a loss to understand where we are going with this.
.
Am I being obnoxious? [strange as this seems, real question] Usually when I find myself in these awkward situations it’s because I’ve been obnoxious and I honestly failed to realize it. If so, – I really do apologize.
.
Look, I’ll just shush for awhile.
Owen
You wrote
To me that read as if you were suggesting the $100 K and as being above and beyond the $9K that you paid. Thanks for confirming that it was not above and beyond the $9K.
Ok. I misunderstood your answer.
You seem to be reading “don’t get government subsidized insurance via Medicare” as suggesting you would be blocked from getting insurance issued by someone other than the government and paying for it yourself. That’s not what I am suggesting and I don’t know why anyone would think that not getting government subsidized anything means you couldn’t get private insurance (unless for some ridiculous reason the government doesn’t permit you to do that. But presumably if they no longer allowed high income elderly to get Medicare, they would let you get private insurance.)
With an income of $70K, I should think you could have gotten insurance provided the government didn’t prohibit private insurance– and I think that’s the way it should be. No one here is suggesting those with high incomes should be prohibitted from getting insurance. Quite the contrary: most of us think you should get it on the open market.
Presumably, had you not had access to Medicare, you would still have bought insurance on the private market. So, you would have had those “in the absence of Medicare and private insurance.
I think we should income qualify Medicare and permit people like you to buy insuranace on the private market. That would have covered those bills.
Owen: “I would expect health insurance for this pool to be in the range of $35,000 per year”
“Without Medicare, well over $100K.”
.
I think that you are exaggerating the actual costs in both cases.
Medicare covered 55 million people and cost $505 billion in 2014. That is about $9000 per person covered.
http://kff.org/medicare/fact-sheet/medicare-spending-and-financing-fact-sheet/
And how did you determine the surgery costs? They sound high to me, but I am no expert. Are they hospital chargemaster costs? Those are greatly inflated. One can get an idea of what surgical procedures would cost in a free market here: http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/
.
Actual health care costs, while certainly not cheap, are much less than most people seem to believe.
Mark Bofill,
I’m also unconvinced by arguments like “A poll of Canadian’s say they’d prefer to strengthen their system.. ” as telling us much of anything about which system is best
Articles from 2016 from Canada:
Healthcare wait times hit 20 weeks in 2016: report
Crossing the Border for Care
Canada’s Health-Care System Is Failing To Deliver Timely Care To Patients
Time to stop kidding ourselves — our health care system is flatlining
Canada uses “wait time” to ration. Google “Canadian medical system rationing 2016”. It may be that Canadians “think” they’ll fix this by strengthening their system. That doesn’t mean they are correct nor that our system would benefit by being more like theirs.
FWIW: Canadians get around some of the features of their public insurance by … uhmmm… getting private insurance either to “top up” or whatever.
Mark,
“Am I being obnoxious? ”
Not in the slightest. But you did ask me a question, and I wanted to point out that there are big-government solutions that can work well.
Well the concept of triggering is a real reaction, as in emotional entanglement on an issue and responding with more emotion than is typically warranted, overly sensitive etc. The actual definition is all over the place depending on the source.
.
Everyone can probably name a few issues that “trigger” them this way. Someone talks about what a great job the media did covering the election, TRIGGER!
.
The other side where this goes south is trigger warnings, and what should be done about it. In my view, nothing at all. If professors want to list trigger warnings that is fine by me (with exception noted below) as long as the course material remains unaltered and students don’t get special treatment for being triggered.
.
We have been seeing trigger warnings before movies for decades.
.
Trigger warnings are bad when they become sign posts for culturally correct opinions. I find it amusing I am warned before a movie that it has “thematic elements” which I would bet ten people would give you ten different answers on what this means, and there are no trigger warnings for homosexual depictions which many people simply don’t want to watch. Here we see a cultural filter being applied to warnings and the system becomes politically corrupt.
Owen,
Got it! Thanks, I understand you now.
My trigger is hearing people talk about triggers [edit: in a certain context, as you touch on in your comment], safe [spaces], income [in]equality, microaggressions, and toxic masculinity. Oddly not carrot cake though. I ‘trigger’ the other way when people associate carrot cake (usually steveF) with these other triggers. I like carrot cake, particularly with creme cheese frosting.
.
I take your point though I think. Nothing dirty about the word ‘trigger’. I guess.
lucia: “I’m also unconvinced by arguments like “A poll of Canadian’s say they’d prefer to strengthen their system.. †as telling us much of anything about which system is best”
Owen: “I wanted to point out that there are big-government solutions that can work well.”
.
There are big government solutions that work, but “work well” is debatable. My standard for working well is considerably higher than working better than the hot mess of a system that we have in the U.S.
.
As lucia points out, there are significant holes in the Canadian system. When I worked in Canada, my employer provided health insurance to cover all sorts of things not covered by the government. Then there are things like people dying on gurneys in ER’s without ever getting the treatment that could have saved their lives, people dying in hospitals because of errors made by the severely overworked nursing staff, people being on wait lists until their condition deteriorates to the point that the treatment is useless, people traveling to the U.S. (or medical tourism countries) to get the care they can’t get in Canada, etc.
.
More to the point is the reason such surveys get taken. It is because the governments keep floating ideas to change the system. That is because they need to get costs under control before health care costs sink the government. But it never goes anywhere. I don’t think there is any third rail in U.S. politics that can compare to health care in Canadian politics.
.
Our system sucks, but emulating Canada would be a severe mistake. We need to find something that actually works and that is sustainable.
The SJW’s weaponized triggers so the phrase commonly means exactly what you suspect it does. A bludgeon in the culture wars.
Thanks for the explanation.
I meant
Lucia, Thanks for the explanation
Lucia,
Yes. I have the impression that when people sing the praises of systems with socialized medicine that somehow some aspects are glossed over. You point out wait times. For me:
.
My former father in law is a serious believer in socialism and/or communism. Admirer of Cuban socialism and all of their miraculous social achievements. The man was born with a condition that caused his cholesterol to always be out of wack – really made no difference what he did or what he ate or whatever, his arteries were going to clog much much faster than everyone else. The man is still alive, has had a heart transplant and many surgeries, some cutting edge at the time (this if I remember right). I have always marveled at the fact that every last one of these treatments were done in the United States. And he still lives in and gets treated in the U.S. today. Mysterious…
Tom Scharf (Comment #158657)
“I don’t think immigration bans are going to make a dent in terrorism but people shouldn’t pretend the terrorism threat doesn’t exist either.”
____
I agree. The threat exists, but it’s not high on my list of things to worry about.
Max_OK,
I’m share your view. A terrorism threat exists, but I find other things more worrisome.
As it happens: I’m more worried about us proactively curbing our own civil liberties for “fear” of terrorism.
Owen,
How would you like having to make a doctor’s office visit every time you needed a prescription refilled and prescriptions were only good for one month? Probably not much. But that’s what I heard from a Canadian a few years back. Canadian doctors don’t get much money from an office visit, so they game the system to up the number of office visits.
My guess would be that a lot of the Canadians who approve of their system don’t actually interact with it much.
Turbulent Eddie (Comment #158660)
February 7th, 2017 at 10:59 am
Eddie, I liked your post You made good points. I would like to comment on the following part.
You said “But it is not the personal risk of death that makes jihad a rationally assessable threat. Rather, it is the intent and motivation of jihadists to defeat secular government that makes it a threat. Car accidents do kill many more, but they are more random and are not motivated to end US government and society.”
______
If jihadists intent is to defeat America’s secular government, and the plan is to do it with terrorism in the U.S., they better think of another plan because obviously that one isn’t working. Since terrorism isn’t working inside our borders, as we have it under control), it makes little sense to tighten controls even more. Could, however, the motivation or intent of jihadists by itself be a threat to our government? Not unless they develop a means.
Mike M.,
I ran across this publication today.
Economists can claim all they want that per-capita GDP is the only definition of standard of living. PPP adjusted median family income is, IMO, a much better measure and it’s poorly correlated with per-capita PPP GDP. Increased foreign trade has caused only a small part of the increase in the fraction of the working age population that don’t have jobs and aren’t looking for work.
The shift from a trade surplus to a trade deficit correlates well to the end of the gold standard in the US in 1971. Any attempt to get the US back to a trade surplus will crash the global economy in the absence of any other action.
From this week’s Thoughts from the FrontLine (http://www.MauldinEconomics.com and http://www.MauldinEconomics.com/Important-disclosures)
Other action would be for the Federal Reserve to prop up foreign currencies by purchasing them on the open market without sterilizing the transaction.
Dewitt: …without sterilizing the transaction?
j ferguson,
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sterilization.asp#ixzz4Y2Lj3iyD
The point of the currency intervention would be to increase the total amount of dollars in circulation, much like how we run a current account deficit today.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #158709): “Canadian doctors don’t get much money from an office visit, so they game the system to up the number of office visits.”
.
Some Canadian doctors do that. My primary care doctor never did that, but I encountered specialists who did.
.
“My guess would be that a lot of the Canadians who approve of their system don’t actually interact with it much.”
.
No, they just have not encountered a major problem. Mostly the system works pretty well.
More to the point: A lot of the Canadians who approve of their system also bitch about their taxes.
.
Addition: Personally, I was pretty satisfied with the care I got in Canada.
In relation to health care in Canada:
I live here and use the system, if only because there is no choice (unlike most countries, Canada has in place legal mechanisms that preclude almost all private options for anything medical related).
I am a libertarian, so that bothers me intensely. However, I will have to admit that the system by and large works for most of us. If I have a medical problem, I can and do get it dealt with without having to worry about my personal budget limitations.
However, our system comes at the price of any number of limitations and drawbacks. Examples include:
-We do have rationing, often in the form of waiting times for procedures. Those wait times can be absurd (I have a friend who has been on a wait list for a pain clinic/specialist for almost three years, and who has – by law – no other option but to keep waiting). The rationing is almost always based of governmental finances rather than medical personnel shortages.
-We have little choice for care: shopping around for a good specialist is not really possible, choosing which hospital to go to is not possible, procedures are limited to what the system feels is necessary.
-It still doesn’t cover everything: Without a separate health care plan, I would still have to cover the full cost of drugs, medical devices and ambulances.
-It isn’t actually all that cheap: we pay taxes at a much higher rate than Americans, and much of the difference goes to the health care system. [Additionally, I would opine that if the US were ever to enact tort reforms you costs would sink to something approaching ours anyway.]
-We still have, even within the single system, two tiered access. For us it is not related to wealth and good health plans, but influence. Those who are connected to the political/medical structure receive timelier, better care. [The corruptive effects this has on society is probably my single biggest dislike of socialized medicine.]
As I said, generally the system works, and at its best can work well for the large majority of Canadians. When it fails, though, it can fail spectacularly, and, as with most bureaucratic systems, rarely is anyone actually held accountable for the failures.
The observations by kch (Comment #158716) agree quite well with what I experienced.
I would differ on one point: Canada definitely has two tiered access based on wealth. The upper tier is the U.S. system, for Canadians who can afford it.
Canadians insist that their system is just as good as the U.S. But if they really believed that, the Danny Williams flap would not have been such a big deal.
For non-Canadians, search on: danny williams heart surgery
Mike M,
Re: Danny Williams, thank you. That story has more ‘ummphf’ and cohesion and intelligibility than the ‘my former father in law’ example. I’ll remember it.
An idea for lowering health care costs:
Doctors in Canada and elsewhere before practicing in America must do a residency as if they have no experience. If this rule were eliminated, then the supply of doctors would increase substantially, and should lower prices.
Since states are responsible for licensing, this could be done at the state level, though the AMA doctor’s union would retaliate by messing with the state’s medical students.
Tom Scharf
Terrorism is a concern, it is mostly homegrown and directed remotely over the Internet (see Rukmini Callimachi’s articles). It may be better called a fight over the platform that Trump campaigned on (e.g. Muslim ban) and is turning into reality.
Trump’s campaign planted the seeds for a post-election period unlike any other in recent history. If there was any one thing that Trump seemed to be consistent about over the last few decades, it was his admiration for strongmen and authoritarianism (Saddam, Tiananmen square, Putin). Trump’s moves so far are following the authoritarian’s playbook .
As Ezra Klein wrote, the Constitution was written to prevent demagogues from acquiring too much power. However, the weakness is in the role of organized parties i.e., there is no Congress to counter-balance the President, it is only the opposing party. The GOP in this case is turning a blind eye to Trump just as the financial system did to Madoff.
We may yet come out with an “illiberal, not quite autocracy” as Frum put it, but only with pushback from the system and the people who continue to be opposed to Trump.
Re: Danny Williams
Yes, the wealthy will always be able to get better care if they are willing to go elsewhere. I was concentrating on access to our own system, but the point is well taken.
We even had a sitting Prime Minister (Jean Chretien) making secret trips to the Mayo clinic. He could not afford – politically – to admit that he could get better care in the US. Didn’t stop him from using government resources to make the trips, though.
This brings up another drawback to Canadian socialized medicine I missed above: we do not have, and probably never will have, medicine on the cutting edge. The system does not reward/accept innovation, as innovations are usually expensive (at least at the start) and governments are cost-averse. Our governments will constantly denigrate the US system, while happily accepting its benefits.
kch: “This brings up another drawback to Canadian socialized medicine I missed above: we do not have, and probably never will have, medicine on the cutting edge. The system does not reward/accept innovation, as innovations are usually expensive (at least at the start) and governments are cost-averse.”
.
Excellent point. If the U.S. were to adopt the Canadian system, progress in medicine would probably slow to a crawl. But it would “save” a lot of money.
If the US adopts socialized medicine, where will Canadians go for health care?
Seniors cannot give up being part of Medicare without giving up Social Security benefits as well.
RB,
I grow weary of the “Trump is going to be Hitler because he also has ten fingers and ten toes” articles that have become a staple for almost a year now when bomb throwers run out of things to write about. We are now in the judge Trump by what he does, not what he says phase.
.
So far the only thing truly exceptional in the first few weeks is the hysteria of the press and opposition in my view. Temporary travel bans are weak tea compared to things like nationalizing healthcare or declaring war on Iraq.
.
The decline in trust of the media has been happening for 40 years now and their institution’s precarious state is self inflicted and their problem to solve. They deserve criticism although Trump is overdoing it, as usual.
.
People want strong leaders. Nobody complains when the strong leaders are on their side. The Russians love Putin if one can trust the polls. It’s mostly theater, I’ll pay attention when it translates to action.
.
The “Muslim Ban” is only exceeded by the audacity of Obama’s “War on Muslims” if one wants to judge policy by disparate impacts. Although I am ambivalent at best about this ban, it was supported by pluralities of the electorate during the election, although recent polls show this may be changing.
The Europeans are no fans of Muslim immigration and oppose it much more than Americans do. I suppose this should be expected given the reality of the last couple years. I think this reality is in conflict with the presentation in the media.
.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/what-do-europeans-think-about-muslim-immigration
.
“‘All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped’
Overall, across all 10 of the European countries an average of 55% agreed that all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped, 25% neither agreed nor disagreed and 20% disagreed.”
Mostly intelligent comment by Trump on the court system: “I don’t ever want to call a court biased so I won’t call it biased, and we haven’t had a decision yet, but courts seem to be so political. “But it would be so great for our system if they could read something and do what’s right.”
….
I agree with his general sentiment here and am glad that he is talking about it. [personally, I don’t understand his reluctance to call a court biased — many courts are biased. It is an unavoidable consequence of judges being people.] I think courts have far too much power, and they have no special skills that place their judgment above that of others. And, in fact the best predictor of Supreme Court votes is ideology.
…
If the courts hold that Trump can’t closely vet potential admittees coming from Muslim countries, I would simply reduce the number of refugees to a very low number — something like 5,000 in general and then draft new rules for those really deserving people who are in serious, immediate danger and admit those refugees under the new rules.
JD
JD, there is no reason to limit the number of refugees. Trump could still issue the ban on refugees going forward, while the courts require existing visa holders to be allowed in.
MikeN ” Trump could still issue the ban on refugees going forward, while the courts require existing visa holders to be allowed in.”
….
That is not the way I (without a whole lot of research) read the law or the way it would be interpreted by many judges. If the ban is perceived as being aimed at Muslims, many judges would strike it down. You can avoid that problem by simply reducing the number of refugees who could come under the old rules. I would also add a proviso that any immigrant or refugee would have to agree to respect the First Amendment and the potential mockery of religious figures past and present (See generally Pam Geller and attacks made on her)
JD
Upthread I commented on my refusal to have a neck CT Scan after falling down stairs and hitting my head but not having any neck or arm pain. A couple of days ago, I went to my doctor and mentioned my decision not to have a neck CT Scan and she said I had made the right choice.
JD
9th circuit upholds stay . In Comment #158336 I had linked to lawyer comments about intent posing a problem for the government. This seems to have been a consideration also (page 25).
actually, they did not rule on the religious claim since they decided that the Government was not likely to succeed on the “due process” claim.
And 1..2..3.. didn’t take too long for the tweet.
The ninth circuit court, seemingly of Kazistan, has spoken. After all the machinations, the SC, with Scalia’s replacement in place, will overturn this crazy ruling. The Constitution is clear, the law is clear, and the Ninth Circuit doesn’t appear to care about either. Congress can, and should, splinter the Ninth Circuit, diluting the leftist nutcake judges with many more sane judges. The ruling doesn’t have the finality of Kelo V New London, but it has the same grotesque ignorance of the Constitution and the rule of law.
JD, how can a court compel the Trump Administration to issue visas?
MikeN: “how can a court compel the Trump Administration to issue visas?”
I was wondering the same thing. My guess is that even the 9th Circuit is not wacky enough to try that. My guess is that they ruled that the already issued visas can not be revoked without due process (what I have seen is unclear as to just what was decided). Bad enough.
.
Edit: Should have checked the Volokh Conspiracy first. This is not a final decision, the court only refused to overturn the stay. The concern seems to be to protect people with “viable due process claimsâ€, which does not seem to be all visa holders. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/09/quick-reactions-to-the-9th-circuits-decision-in-washington-v-trump/
Mike N: “JD, how can a court compel the Trump Administration to issue visas?”
….
The simple way to do that is to say that Trump is violating a statute that governs refugees and visas. Here is the decision. See link here. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-court-decision-travel-ban-ruling-234870
As I expected it ruled on equal protection and freedom of religion grounds. With Trump’s statements pertaining to Muslims, he is going to have significant problems with religious discrimination claims. Personally, I would argue that Islam is both a religion and an ideology of civil governance and should be treated differently from what we in the US would typically consider to be a religion. However, I doubt that the courts would buy it. Haven’t read the statute involved. The case is not that hard to read.
Would also add that if this case went before the Supreme Court, I think logically and legally Ginsburg should not sit on the case because of her bias. However, I can’t see her recusing herself and don’t see the full court forcefully making her stand aside.
JD
Just skimmed case. Was incorrect in that Court did not rule directly on equal protection and religious establishment issues because it felt that “due process” issues resolved the whole case and that there was no need to rule on anything else. Court did say that ” A law that
has a religious, not secular, purpose violates that clause, Case: 17-35105, 02/09/2017, ID: 10310971, DktEntry: 134, Page 24 of 29 — Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971), as does
one that “officially prefer[s] [one religious denomination]
over another…”
This is a strong indication that Trump is in trouble on this issue before this court.
JD
Otherwise known as the 9th circus.
Here’s another couple of interesting reads:
Trump’s counsel either ineffectual or incompetent (I vote the latter).
Trump did not appear to follow rule of law in writing and implementing this executive order.
Carrick,
in the first article you reference, the notion is floated that Trump wants his EO to be stayed (made to go away) by the judiciary so that he will be able to blame them for a terrorist attack should it come. This will be the justification for his assumption of greater, more pervasive authorities, authorities beyond the judicial review.
Do you think Trump is capable of that sort of scheme?
j ferguson,
I lean toward just incompetent.
j ferguson: I’m with Lucia…I don’t think Trump is that clever.
And if we had a major attack, I think Trump would be held accountable for the attack regardless of any interference by the courts. And people would point out that this mess was created by the incompentent nature in which this particular EO was written and implemented.
j ferguson: “This will be the justification for his assumption of greater, more pervasive authorities, authorities beyond the judicial review.”
That’s getting into “Dick Cheney planned Sept. 11” territory.
.
I suspect that Trump may not have cared too much about legal details. The EO would seem to be at least partly theater, serving two purposes. One is to demonstrate that he is acting to protect the public, the other is to provide cover in case something happens between now and the time that a more permanent and comprehensive policy is put in place. Trump would probably prefer that the order stand, but the theater aspect is served either way.
.
When I say “may not have cared too much about legal details” I don’t mean to imply that he thinks that unimportant. Just that getting the order out quickly was more important. Doing it both quickly and correctly may not have been an option, given that his team is not yet in place and the limited cooperation from the career bureaucrats and Obama appointees.
Re: Mike M. (Comment #158834)
Not at all. There have already been clear indications of trying to expand authority, with utter disdain for checks and balances.
oliver: “There have already been clear indications of trying to expand authority, with utter disdain for checks and balances.”
.
I haven’t noticed. Please provide examples.
To start with, disdain for ethics rules, senatorial oversight, judicial review… even the intelligence community, all out of being “very smart”…
Oh, and come to think of it: alt-facts. As if one can assert authority over reality itself.
In other news
– Trump had to walk back on the “One China” policy as the Chinese issued a deep chill after November.
– Flynn lied about not discussing sanctions with Russia
– AP news article says that Trump privately acknowledged mistakes in the travel ban rollout. Which would imply there was no tactical plan involved.
Chris Cillizza at WaPo trotted out a similar idea suggesting that Trump was behind Gorsuch’s remarks about Trump’s disheartening statements regarding the judiciary. Cillizza’s thought was that what Gorsuch was saying would make him more palatable to the Democrats. It has.
but like the other scheme, I think Trump is too simple to think of something like this…. maybe Bannon.
oliver (Comment #158837): “To start with …”
In other words, Trump’s “clear indications of trying to expand authority” is something that exists in your imagination.
j ferguson: “… Trump’s disheartening statements regarding the judiciary.”
I see nothing disheartening in criticizing judges when they overstep their authority, just the opposite. To do otherwise is to accept the slow creep towards the judiciary making themselves our unelected rulers.
.
j ferguson: “I think Trump is too simple to think of something like this…”.
In other words, Trump can not possibly win the nomination, let alone get elected. You have been proven wrong. Accept it.
j ferguson,
Honestly, I don’t think Trump or Bannon are “behind” what Gorusch says to the Senate. I think Gorusch is his own man. I don’t think either Trump or Bannon could get Gorusch and say , “now look….here’s what were’ going to do….”
oliver,
I don’t think Trump has tried to expand authority beyond the level used by Obama. He’s exercising it at the same level– in fact, as yet, not even as much. (But that’s mostly just an issue of time.)
Executive authority is too high. People can see the exercise when the executive does things they don’t like. You’re seeing it now– but it was there when Obama did it too. (And on the same topic: immigration. On which Obama was overturned by a lower court.) Obama was, in fact, an even heavier seizure of executive authority because he promulgated an order precisely because Congress didn’t pass a bill implementing what he wanted.
Mike M., You read less into simplicity than I do. I submit that his simplicity led to very specific focus which appealed enough to the electorate to get him elected. Simplicity may not serve him well in office.
It may be that he also is a bit at sea with common usage of English. Don’t you think “so-called judge” demeans the judiciary more than disputes the conclusion of a single jurist?
I have nothing to get over. I thought the guy suffers from a fairly severe personality disorder when I first encountered him and have seen nothing since to suppose it diminished or my perception in error. At least he doesn’t seem to be getting worse.
I continue to believe that he will not serve out his term.
j ferguson,
I think that you underestimate Trump and that he is much smarter and subtle than you give him credit for. I suppose that we aren’t going to settle that, at least not until he has been in office for a while. I don’t think Trump has any trouble with common English, by which I mean the language spoken by the large majority of Americans. But, unlike other public figures, he refuses to talk like the elites.
Mike M:
I think you’re giving him way too much credit here.
For starts, he’s subtle like a thrown brick is subtle. Where is the subtlety in anything he is doing?
As to smart… what kind of “smart”? Certainly not book smart. He barely even reads. He’s a TV addict.
He plays other people off against each other, and hates to look like he’s not in control. That sounds more like “childish” than “smart”.
That said, there’s a couple of interesting articles here:
Trump vexed by challenges, scale of government. He should have read the job description before applying.
Trump Fixes Flaw in Post-Crisis Regulatory Crackdown (subscription required). Regulatory reform is the most positive part of his agenda. So far this looks like it’s going in the right direction.
Here’s another one. California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers. Who could have seen that coming….
lucia:
And they are too ready to extend more power, when the executive branch is moving in the direction they like. There are people who practically want to hand Trump a crown.
A related article here: Why courts could rein in executive power – after decades of allowing it
If you take away executive power, don’t forget you have to give this power to someone else, Congress, the courts, or (gulp) unelected bureaucrats in regulatory agencies. If not, then the power is unallowable by anyone.
.
I’m not entirely convinced moving the (unspecified) power anywhere else has any benefits at all. I like a gridlocked government myself and would prefer a 2/3 majority is required in Congress just to order lunch. Now that I think about it, that would force them to cooperate or starve to death.
Tom Scharf
Regulatory agencies act under the executive. They are one of the arms or weapons through which the executive exercises his power.
Removing agencies power = reducing executive power. That is: Congress can act to limit rule making by agencies, remove it, and so on. The same way the granted it in the first place– thereby extending executive power toward law making, which it does not have unless granted by Congress.
2/3rd majority in congress doesn’t affect Congressional power so much. It just affects how fast they can do things– but they still would have the power to do things.
Carrick
Yep. And many of those people likely believe that– against all precedent– the party currently in power will somehow keep it for ever and ever and every.
I think the reason people tend to think parties they like will remain in power is that from their pov, others have finally “come to their senses”. Since the position of their party is sensible, they assume that these people will now “remain in their senses” and not switch back to the other party.
But we see this is rarely so.
Right now, Trump is doing some good things. He is doing some idiotic things– or doing good to neutral things in idiotic ways. The idiotic things aren’t going to sway the avid Trump supporters who will diagnose all sorts of hidden brilliance in them. But if he does too many of these things where the brilliance is hidden …. well… people are going to get tired of him.
Beyond that even if many things he does are good, there is a strong tendency for ‘over correction’ in politics. I know where the motivation for moves like Obama’s (stupid) dear colleague letter on Title IX comes from. But the dear colleague letter went way overboard in trying to do what the letter writer probably thought was an attempt to achieve “balance”. That sort of “over-correction” is what leads people to move to the “other party”.
I’m sure we’ll see over-corrections in the other direction. The party MikeM doesn’t like will end up in power eventually — almost certainly before I die. But possibly much, much sooner especially if Trump displays more of his hidden genius doing more wing-ding stuff (which I think he is likely to do.)
Tom Scharf (Comment #158859): “If you take away executive power, don’t forget you have to give this power to someone else”.
No, you don’t. Power belongs to the people. We delegate some of that power to the government for practical reasons. We have given way too much power to the central government and way too much of that to the executive. It is long past time to take a lot of that power back.
Carrick,
Trump graduated from an Ivy league university. I’ll check whether “book reading” is part of the curriculum at Penn. So yeah, he’s an idiot. A billionaire who got elected leader of the most powerful country on earth idiot. A person who the “book reading” intellectual class laughed at and parodied the entire way.
.
Much of the country could possibly be fed up with the smugness of the book reading class who wear their condescension on their sleeve while virtue signalling each other about the latest in comparative literature.
.
It’s hilarious that 10,000 experts in psychology, communication, political sciences, and the social sciences with the aid of endless focus groups were unable to overcome a brash loudmouth unsophisticated dolt who ran a campaign by instinct. What a humbling experience that must have been. It turns out the opinion of an unemployed coal miner counts as much as the provost of Harvard in the voting booth.
.
HRC could have learned a lot more about the country she wanted to lead if she had watched The Apprentice or Duck Dynasty.
Tom Scharf,
We’re not confronted by Trump when he was at Penn. We’re getting the 70 year old version.
You’re right about HRC.
One other thing I haven’t seen any hint of is recognition by the libs that their disdain for the education level of the folks in fly-over country should make them question the public school system and the unionized teachers’ failure in bringing their charges up to a ‘proper’ understanding of the workings of democracy.
Is disconnect the right word?
Rumor has it travel ban EO is getting rewritten. Hopefully they got a few book readers on it this time.
Tom Scharf:
Yes. As far as I can tell, with one of those “my dad bought the degree for me” giftcards.
I never said he was an idiot, but I don’t see much evidence that he’s particularly bright either.
j ferguson:
I’m not particularly sold that the Penn version was the best or the brightest, but yeah, this is the 70-year old model with lots of miles on it.
The funny thing is I live in “flyover country” and I know plenty of people who are knowledge curious and book read. I generally even make a distinction on degree when I interact with people, though there are certain types of skills and knowledge you won’t have access to without training.
The idea that everybody in “flyover country” just watches reality tv is as much an exaggeration when it comes from the educated right as it from the eductated left.
Trump is smart, and yes, not in the bookish way. Much of what bothers people in the media doesn’t affect his swing voters. And come next election, there will always be some more supreme court nominations to be made. Apparently the price willing to be paid for the traditional GOP agenda includes self-dealings such as
— Trump misled about his separation from his businesses and trust records show that he is still closely tied
— The security, food and lodging at Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago (where he now plans to take the Japanese PM also) are taxpayer dollars going into his pocket
Apparently Trump Tower security is costing a million dollars a day. If true, that’s a 1.5B additional cost over the next four years. And imagine the outcry if Hillary said that she wants to reform Dodd-Frank so that her friends can get loans easily.
RB-
Yes, there are problems with Trump’s conflict of interest.
The reason that didn’t matter during the election is the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Inc was seen as being just as or more self dealing. (And donors dropped away when she failed to win. Who’d a thunk? voters where the ones who’d a thunk, did think and discounted these conflicts of self interest to either nullify each other or– and this is possibly shocking to you– be less harmful on the Trump side. )
Honestly, I’m not remotely concerned that dignitaries will stay at a hotel/ resort nor with Trump preferring to stay in that hotel rather than some other hotel. Yes. It’s sort of perverse that Trump owns it. But…. still…
Honestly, I think people knew this would happen. But rules that would decree that business people can’t sit as president without giving up their business would deprive voters of their choice. I suspect people sense this would be a problem and for that reason the hew and cry over dignitaries staying at Mar A Lago is not as large as you personally might wish it.
In contrast, if he’s bought Mar A Lago after being president and then started steering business there…. that would be seen as much worse.
You mean to protect Melania and Barron. That’s costly. Very costly. Sure. Much more costly than if Melania and Barron moved to DC.
If you want this to change, perhaps you can try to get Congress to pass a bill saying the presidents wife and children will not get security detail unless they reside in the white house. Then you’ll need to figure out how to word things to permit exceptions for travel overseas on luxury vacations — which the former first lady did rather extensively. http://www.newsmax.com/TomFitton/National-Debt-Travel/2015/08/24/id/671575/
Or figure out the precise dollar figure that is permitted and figure out how we write rules to enforce these things.
BTW:
This article puts the cost quite a bit lower than “apparently… million dollars a day”.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/feb/08/social-media/does-melania-trumps-security-detail-cost-more-fede/
How much it will be we can’t guess. Presumably more if protestors decide to hang out there 24/7, less if they don’t. More in NY City than if her home had been “middle of nowhere Idaho”.
Liberal Paranoia — My brother and sister are strong Trump opponents. Just talked to my sister today and she said she is worried about her investments because of Trump. (It is actually a real, immediate concern of hers) I told her that Trump has said he would lower taxes and that whatever concerns she has about Trump, this shouldn’t be a major one. When I mentioned that she said that she didn’t want to discuss it anymore [with the unstated but obvious premise that she didn’t want to know anything about Trump that was not negative]
….
Had a very similar discussion with my brother over a different (minor to me) political issue with my brother in Hawaii when I visited him over Christmas. He said he wished he had never brought it up and just wanted to end the discussion.
I should add that myself and my siblings all get along very well on a personal level and the fact that they can’t handle even discussing Trump as though he is not evil personified seems to be quite common on the Left. The legacy media with their incessant attacks on the most minor issues and consistent exaggeration of Trumps faults and mistakes, seem to be coming from the same place.
JD
JD Ohio,
Today she was afraid of markets because of Trump?! The markets done quite well over 3 months. My theory is that it’s not so much love of Trump as that fear of Hillary must had been keeping prices down. This recovered when Trump was elected. It’s my theory: I’m sticking to it. But really, at least so far, Trump hasn’t harmed the markets. Of course it could still happen, but there’s no particular reason to expect he will be horrible for markets.
It always amazes me how much people who firmly believe (and complain) “Republicans are the party of Wall Street” worry about their stock portfolios.
John M,
The same people denigrated Reaganomics as ‘trickle-down.’ But at least with Reaganomics there was some actual trickle down. Quantitative easing and zero interest rate policies were all trickle-up. Wall Street was the beneficiary, not Main Street.
More than Trump unprepared to run the government, is the government is unprepared to be run by him. Some executive orders is common. The overall pace of action is higher than for other Presidents. Something new happens before opponents are done being outraged at the previous action.
The ninth district has (don’t know correct verb) to rehear the Washington v. Trump case. (I have pdf from wall street journal, but not link…)
Link to tweet containing link
https://twitter.com/joe_palazzolo/status/830188767638069248
It’s “vote to rehear”
9th Circuit, on its own, has called for a vote on whether to rehear Washington v. Trump
RB, Where did you get the $1million per day. Lets say there are 5 agents there at $200K per year, that $1 million /year!! Maybe a motor pool of a couple of vehicles that the government already owned. Of course, with all the Soros paid thugs and violence out there, there may be 10 agents there. Perhaps Soros should pay for it. I read that 1/3 of the protesters live with their parents. Send them the bill. :_)
Are they trying to slow down the process? The Supreme Court won’t hear it if it’s under appeal, though I think they did that with ObamaCare. For the 9th circuit, even the en banc hearing is just a minority of the judges.
MikeN,
We don’t know what they are trying to do. Evidently, it takes one justice to call for a vote to rehear with the full pane. Possibilities range from that one thinking the 3 panel screwed the pooch and wants to write a scathing dissent, to the rest wanting to make it a unanimous 9 to …. [insert your guess here].
We’ll see.
Rehearing. It is called en banc rehearing or review. It is generally done in important cases or where there are conflicting decisions within a circuit court. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_banc The point of en banc review is that there are more judges that hear the case. Was surprised to read in wikipedia that in the Ninth Circuit en banc review can occur with only a portion of all of the sitting judges (11 out of the 29 typically in Ninth Circuit) Would expect that all 29 judges will hear this very important case. The one en banc hearing that I have had was before the whole panel of the Sixth Circuit.
….
Seriously doubt that the en banc hearing will overturn the initial appellate decision because the Ninth Circuit is liberal. I am guessing that it decided to rehear the case to take the heat off of the three judges and to show [in all probability], a largely unified front against Trump. The one thing that could help Trump is that he could re-write the executive order instead of merely relying on the unofficial statements of his counsel, which hurt him in the initial appellate decision.
JD
JD is it possible that the judges want to narrow down the rejection of Trump, away from the idea that every person in the world has a due process claim in the US?
MikeN “JD is it possible that the judges want to narrow down the rejection of Trump, away from the idea that every person in the world has a due process claim in the US?”
….
I know very little about the Ninth Circuit, it being on the West Coast. However, 18 of its 25 judges were appointed by Democrats. http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/07/how-liberal-reputation-of-9th-circuit-court-of-appeals-is-overblown-scholars-say/ My expectation is that they will uphold the lower court’s decision. (Pure speculation based on the composition of the court)
I would add that there is much that was wrong with Trump’s order, but if he did come up with a more limited order, I would expect that this court would be predisposed to shoot it down.
JD
This is an interesting viewpoint opposing the decision:
RB,
Volokh quoted an interesting discusson from Standford professor Michael McConnell’s commentary
http://www.hoover.org/research/flawed-restraining-flawed-order
It’s worth reading the whole thing.
The order itself gets slammed, but so does the court ruling. He hits the ruling pretty hard– even on unsexy things like “standing”
It may well turn out that even the 9th circuit recognizes the danger of a court expanding standing in such a silly way. But if there is no standing, there is no case.
lucia, I don’t understand McConnell’s argument, which seems to be based on a particularly bad analogy, and ends up attacking arguments the 9th circuit never made.
I think that the states unquestionably have standing via the argument of federal interference with the functioning of the state. Basically, the 9th circuit argued that the standing comes through the interference with state-run universities (given the legal precedence they listed for this, that part looks unassailable).
If you look at the Obama administration, there were numerous similar lawsuits over things like transgender bathrooms, obamacare, the overtime rule, and so forth.
There’s a sort of anti-federalist argument here (which summarizes part of the history of state law suits against the federal government), about limiting the states rights to sue:
Lawsuits against obamacare, transgender bathrooms, and executive orders affecting the function of state-run universities would all seem to fall under this narrowed rubric.
Carrick,
Since the states have no immigration statutes, it’s a real stretch to say that affecting students and faculty at state universities gives states standing. The reductio ad absurdum of that argument is that there shouldn’t be any laws restricting immigration at all.
DeWitt, um no. You’ve applied the brush over broad there.
Legal standing just means the states have a legitimate right to claim harm. It says nothing about whether their claims themselves are legitimate.
The Ninth Circuit’s standing decision was not offensively stupid to me in that I could see some actual minor injury to the State there. The interesting question to me is whether that minor injury should be balanced against the costs the State will incur when refugees and others come to Washington. (For instance, medical care — to me is hard to argue, when looking at the whole picture that Washington was harmed by Trump’s order. However, this is not how courts have traditionally analyzed standing issues.)
….
What was offensively stupid to me was finding standing in the Massachusetts v. Epa case on the ground that Massachusetts could lose land on account of rising seas if tailpipe CO2 emissions were not regulated. Effectively, Massachusetts and the other states were spitting into the wind because the amount of CO2 that would be regulated under these circumstances would be very small compared to the many other sources of CO2 in the US and in foreign countries. The standing issue is reasonably discussed in this wiki article on the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency
…..
Also, Re: Due Process & Recusal
Because the issues in the Ninth Circuit are likely to go to the Supreme Court eventually, I decided to quickley look up recusal standards in light of Ginsburg. Here is what the Court said:
….
“A multimember court must not have its guarantee of
neutrality undermined, for the appearance of bias de-
means the reputation and integrity not just of one jurist,
but of the larger institution of which he or she is a part.
An insistence on the appearance of neutrality is not some
artificial attempt to mask imperfection in the judicial
process, but rather an essential means of ensuring the
reality of a fair adjudication. Both the appearance and
reality of impartial justice are necessary to the public
legitimacy of judicial pronouncements and thus to the rule
of law itself. When the objective risk of actual bias on the
part of a judge rises to an unconstitutional level, the fail-
ure to recuse cannot be deemed harmless.” See 4th case cited in Bing Search. Williams v. Pennsylvania http://www.bing.com/search?q=standards+for+recusal+on+the+supreme+court&qs=n&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=standards+for+recusal+on&sc=0-24&sk=&cvid=15910502E1CE49219F0CCFAB11221466
JD
Carrick,
You’re correct. That was an over broad brush. What I should have said was that standing doesn’t mean much if you can so easily torture it into submission.
DeWitt: I don’t think standing by itself means that much. I believe it is mean to be a pretty low-bar hurdle in the legal process. Simply having standing does not imply the lawsuit has legal merit, though lacking standing means it has none of course.
JD Ohio:
If they restrict themselves to green card and visa holders, I suspect the answer is “net injury”. If you bring in refugees, certainly there will be costs borne by the state. I don’t think the right to bring in refugees is a part of the lawsuit though. (I don’t see how it would be a defensible position that the states have a right to allow in refugees. That does seem to be entirely within the provenance of the federal government.)
somewhat environmentally related — Lake Oroville dam may be on the verge of collapsing from all of the heavy rain in Northern Calif. http://www.businessinsider.com/oroville-dam-california-2017-2
JD
JD Ohio,
Not the dam, the emergency spillway. If the spillway fails, then up to 30 feet of water would pour out of the lake very quickly, flooding downstream communities. A failure of the dam itself is extremely unlikely… and would be 10 or 20 times worse than the emergency spillway failure.
I am not an engineer or a scientist, so I will defer to others. Roy Spencer has several posts about this, one of which, I can’t tell whether it is being sarcastic or not. (“Why the Oroville Dam Won’t Fail” — could be distinguishing between dam and spillway) http://www.drroyspencer.com/
….
Either way, public authorities are issuing serious warnings.
JD
I get it now. This link (which I previously posted) has a picture of the spillway and the dam, which are separate structures set apart from each other. http://www.businessinsider.com/oroville-dam-california-2017-2
JD
How much excess water is the dam holding? Could the volume be moved by truck?
It looks to me as if the hazard is not the dam itself nor the holed concrete spillway, but the auxiliary spillway, apparently now called the emergency spillway.
.
The emergency spillway structure is where the failure occurs if there are constant large flows over its top. A dam structure which is what the emergency spillway is has a heel and toe. The heel is the bottom of the structure embedded in the substrate (earth here) on the wet side. The toe is on the dry side and is also embedded in the earth with the intention of providing some resistance – to keep the dam from sliding when the water behind it is high. When a lot of water flows over the top of the emergency spillway it can scour out the earth at the toe, then undermine the structure of the dam leading to possible collapse. It looks from the photos that this structure is not protected well enough to prevent this scouring.
.
The quality of the reporting on this emergency has been abysmal.
.
I agree with SteveF. The failure of the emergency spillway could let loose the top 20-30 feet of the reservoir capacity which is probably a whole lot of water (term of art).
.
The failure of the dam itself would probably be much worse, but seems unlikely given that the emergency spillway structure would fail first ans by turning loose 30 feet of water significantly reduce the load on the remaining dam structure.
.
And if you must know, i am waiting for paint to dry.
J ferguson,
The dam is very secure… the designers were conservative in their work. Yes, there were errors, but noone will be held to account. The problem is the quality of the (normal) dam spillway, which clearly was not well designed, and has failed. I expect the repairs this summer will be …ahem… more carefully done.
Agreed, it is a very fine dam.
.
I doubt that anything drastic will flow (so to speak) from the failure in the normal spillway.
.
I was unimpressed by the apparent lack of protection from scouring at the toe of the auxiliary spillway. This is likely where there will be a significant failure if there is to be one.
MikeN:
Well, the regular spillway is currently carrying 100,000 cuft/second (about 750,000 gal/s). You’d need a BUNCH of trucks to equal of that (about 180 leaving each second).
j ferguson:
Yeah, that is the problem. Apparently, they were warned 10 years ago about the issue with the auxiliary spillway.
As SteveF probably correctly predicts, no heads will roll over this.
The problems with Oroville dam are Trump’s fault. Am exaggerating the headline a bit which states: “The Oroville Dam Crisis Exposes the Flaws in Trump’s Infrastructure Plan” see http://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/02/oroville-dam-flooding-california-infrastructure/516417/
….
I am seriously irked by the people who want to link everything that is wrong with the world to Trump. There is something substantially wrong with people who seem to view the world through a single lens. People like this writer think that if they incessantly criticize Trump by piling on they weaken him. Instead the criticisms are so silly that they strengthen him by showing how simple minded much of the Trump opposition is.
JD
JD Ohio—pretty sure they aren’t saying this is Trumps fault. Rather they are arguing his plan wouldn’t fix this problem. Probably they are right. That’s not an aspersion on him.
The problem is California is kissing away billions on climate consensus policy demands that ignores things people actually need. A reasonable question to ask is when the Obama stimulus (ha) was looking for shovel ready jobs why didn’t any of that $800 billion (iirc) make it to Oroville? As to the Trump stimulus, if climate loons and big green blocked the last improvement at Oroville which would have prevented the damage to emergency spillway, why wouldn’t big green just go to Court and cancel any Trump infrastructure plans anyway?
JD,
I agree with you in essence. Not everything is about Trump. When people make things that are not really about Trump about Trump and Trump’s policies, it can come across as a little unbalanced and a little obsessive, to me anyway.
JD,
I also agree. It ought to be possible to have articles which have nothing to do with Trump actually not mention him.
Carrick,
If you have not already seen it, there is a very interesting paper linked to in a post by Willis at WUWT. The authors (from Stanford) show that a carefully tuned multi-layer photonic structure will reflect >97% of direct solar energy, while simultaneously strongly emitting selectively in the ‘atmospheric window’ infrared range. The result is a surface which cools below ambient air temperature, even while sitting in direct sunlight! The measured cooling rate for a simple test strubture was ~40 watts per square meter at ambient air temperature while receiving >800 watts per square meter of sunlight. The paper claims a more sophisticated mounting structure would reach ~100 watts per square meter cooling while in direct sunlight (and with no violation of the second law 😀).
JD: “Instead the criticisms are so silly that they strengthen him by showing how simple minded much of the Trump opposition is.”
Yep. And Trump knows that, so the criticism won’t alter what he does.
Carrick misses the point, as usual. So what if Trump’s infrastructure plan would not have upgraded the spillway? Obama’s near trillion dollars of stimulus spending did not do that either. The problem with the article JD cites is that is takes something that has nothing to do with Trump and uses it as an opportunity to bash Trump.
j ferguson,
Yes, and it ought to be possible to report on the weather (rain, snow, hot, cold, tornado, hurricane, drought, flood) without harping on GHG emissions, but the chance of that happening in the MSM seems near zero.
j ferguson:
JD’s article discussed the impact of Trump’s proposed trillion-dollar infrastructure program on this type of infrastructure. How is that not relevant?
Mike M:
Read the full article instead of bait jumping at the slightest provocation.
I’m afraid you guys are hypersensitive whenever Trump’s name comes up. I can see disagreeing with the conclusions, but it’s just silly to argue that discussing the impact of his proposed legislation is inappropriate in this context.
SteveF,
There is also a coating commercially available, TiNOx, that does the opposite. It absorbs 95% of incident solar and has an emissivity in the thermal IR of less than 0.05. It works really well for solar water heaters.
DeWitt,
Yes that kind of selective coating has been around for a while. The coating described in the paper seems much more sophisticated, and relies on nano and micro scale layers of precisely controlled thickness. Achieving that kind of coating control on a large scale production line, and on an inexpensive substrate, seem to me the real challenges. They started with a polished silicon wafer, which likely has near molecular smoothness… it is not clear if that level of surface quality is required.
You guys might have better traction with me if you had simply pointed out that whoever wrote the title “The Oroville Dam Crisis Exposes the Flaws in Trump’s Infrastructure Plan”, did a bit of a bait and switch (most of the article isn’t about Trump’s planned infrastructure project).
In fact, other than the last two paragraphs, the body of the article does not discuss Trump at all, except this one mention, which placing him in correctly in historical context in a neutral way:
Sorry guys, but it is hypersentive to complain about Trump’s name mention there.
The final two paragraphs of JD Ohio’s article in my opinion appropriately discusses the possible impact of Trump’s proposed infrastructure legislation:
You might disagree with the conclusions (though this looks solid enough to me), but how is this an inappropriate swing at Trump?
Even if you argued Trump’s legislation isn’t finalized, well then, isn’t that the point of discussing its impact now, so maybe it could be made better?
SteveF,
That cooling could only happen with relatively clear sky conditions. There is no atmospheric window when the sky is covered by clouds.
Carrick,
It doesn’t particularly bother me that some people appear to be slightly Trump obsessed. If you feel that I am hypersensitive about Trump, -shrug-. OK I guess.
I didn’t say it was an inappropriate swing at Trump. I said, not everything is about Trump and Trump’s policies. I don’t look at the situation with this dam and immediately think – hmm, does Trump’s infrastructure initiative address this, or is this a flaw in his plan?
I get that for some people, that’s the interesting angle. For me, it gets old. Because not everything is about Trump and Trump’s policies.
But since we are actually talking about this, it seems to me that the core complaint is that Trump’s plan is ‘lure profit-minded investors’ into putting up money, and that it’s unlikely that private investors will be interested. This is it. This is the long and short of the whole idea [behind the title]The Oroville Dam Crisis Exposes the Flaws in Trump’s Infrastructure Plan. Puh-Leeze. That’s silly.
BTW – I don’t feel like you usually miss the point. I feel like I usually miss the point and you explain the point to me.
Best regards as always Carrick.
Carrick,
The author uses a classic straw-man argument: “If infrastructure investment in the Trump era means widening highways and nothing more….” Trump’s proposal is nothing like that.
.
With regard to the Oroville dam, the problems with the emergency spillway are secondary to the problems with the primary spillway, where an inadequate inital design and/or lack of proper maintenance are now causing safety concerns with the emergency spillway. That kind of reinforced concrete structure can be (and should be!) constructed to last the lifetime of the dam, not a few decades. Talking about Trump’s infrastructure plans (or Obama’s) takes the focus off the real problem: skimping on critical structural designs and/or maintenance is very bad engineering and very bad administration, and someone should be held accountable. But I doubt blame will fall on the administrators of the California water system.
DeWitt,
Of course, clouds block all infrared wavelengths.
mark bofill: I do think there is a fair basis to complain about the title (which probably was written by a title editor instead of the author of the article).
But the article itself actually handles the issues pretty well, and if anything, it’s poking a finger in Obama’s eye, rather than Trump’s. [Though a finger in the eye of the Republican congress post 2011 would be appropriate too, at least in context of road and bridge infrastructure.]
I too appreciate your input as always.
The media has the wrong question with whether to “normalize” Trump, the correct question is they have a choice:
.
1. Normalize Trump
2. Normalize media hysteria.
.
They have unsurprisingly chosen door number two and I have become almost immune to the media hysteria at this point. CNN, WP, and the NYT are getting close to unreadable on anything to do with Trump. They cannot write a single article without taking cheap potshots at him that have been covered a 1000 times. I just don’t want to wade through the emotional tirades where every slight transgression is the next Watergate.
SteveF:
Trump’s proposal is to be privately funded, to the tune of $1 trillion dollars. It is focused on roads, bridges and airports, but not dams.
It’s the author’s position (which I think is reasonable) that this private funding isn’t going to be applied to things that don’t give the investors any return on their money, like repairing spillways of dams. And anyway, dams aren’t even a point of focus of Trump’s proposal, so it’s easy to argue his proposal won’t address them.
But I just don’t see that there’s a strawman here. The question would be, “how would Trump’s proposal for private funding provide monies for dams?”
It’s fair to point out that there is no transportation bill yet, and the real version will probably be different than that proposed by Trump. Again, that seems to be the point here—we should discuss the impact of his proposal, figure out where it is wanting, and make the necessary improvements in the bill so the final infrastructure bill meets our needs better.
The title was unnecessary and somewhat deceptive, but the article is as far as I can tell fine.
SteveF:
I agree–the failure in the primary spillway is a bigger thing. It was designed to handle 450,000 cuft/sec, and it failed around 60,000 cuft/sec.
The problems with the auxillary spillway are in hind sight obvious, and could have been avoided with better engineering (mainly shore up the foundation at the base of the emergency spillway, add a concrete channel). But even with the current rain situation, use of the emegency spillway really should not have been necessary.
Carrick: “You guys might have better traction with me ”
.
Nah, you are much too slippery.
.
It was the title that JD quite rightly complained about. The paragraphs about Trump’s infrastructure plan were entirely superfluous and irrelevant, especially since there is, at yet, no such plan. Both those paragraphs and the title were gratuitous Trump bashing.
.
It is not as if the engineers said that there was work that needed to be done, and that work had not been done because they were waiting for funding. From what I can tell, they concluded that there was no need for the work. So no infrastructure plan would have done anything about it. They might as well titled an article “Trump’s infrastructure plan will do nothing to defeat ISIS”.
Carrick,
That article says the emergency spillway was supposed to handle 450,000 cu ft, not the primary spillway. The article does not even discuss the failure of the primary spillway, which, as you note, was the principle cause of the crisis. I have not seen any data on the primary spillway design capacity, but the rate of discharge was definitely being reduced to minimize further destruction of the primary spillway after it started failing. The water system administrators chose to use the emergency spillway, which had never been used, to reduce the cost of future repairs to the primary spillway. Like I said, people are not focusing on the fundamental problem.
The media seems to not understand that over coverage and taking a biased stance can backfire. Obviously that happened with Trump, but it also happened with the police shootings which has been flood the zone media coverage for almost two years.
.
Gallup: Americans’ Respect for Police Surges
“Three in four Americans (76%) say they have “a great deal” of respect for the police in their area, up 12 percentage points from last year.”
“Meanwhile, two in three nonwhites (67%) report having the same level of respect, an increase of 14 points from last year.”
.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/196610/americans-respect-police-surges.aspx
Re: Dams & Trump
Carrick. Trump may have a general plan that he has proposed, but it is a long ways from being finalized. At the height of fears of a large number of deaths from flooding, it is very unfair to heap blame on Trump, if a catastrophic flooding event occurs. To me it is transparent that the writer of the headline was trying to deflect responsibility from past presidents to Trump in the event of a disaster. We can all debate what is the best way to deal with dams, but no one should be tying Trump into any problems that may be occurring here. It fine to debate the best way to fix the problems, but it should not be done in a fashion that holds Trump in any responsible for the problems occurring now at the height of legitimate fears of a disaster.
JD
MikeM:
The title was over the top. Nobody disputed that. I just pointed out that there wasn’t anything wrong with the article, except perhaps for wilting flowers easily disturbed by criticisms of Trump.
Seriously…what’s with you guys? You can’t even calmly discuss issues with his proposals (many of which I actually like, I should add, like the corporate tax reform).
I’m sorry, but there really is nothing superfluous about noticing that Trump’s proposed infrastructure plan wouldn’t address problems like this dam nor that infrastructure plans are needed to fix this sort of problem before catastrophe strikes. And it was completely in context with the rest of the article to discuss this, in the two paragraphs you claim were “gratuitous Trump bashing”.
Well, according to the article they balked at the costs. Nothing fixes stupid, so there is that.
JD Ohio:
Yes, I agree with that (and pointed that out above too). This is why the title is particularly moronic.
The title doesn’t go that far. Literally it just says “The Oroville Dam Crisis Exposes the Flaws in Trump’s Infrastructure Plan”.
I think that title possibly ends up being click bait, certainly it is deceptive, because the headline isn’t the focus of the article. (As I’ve discussed above, the article could have done a better job spelling out the Trump proposal versus what will likely actual be in the final bill written by Congress.)
But I think you have to work at distorting the title to claim it is trying to “deflect responsibility from past presidents to Trump.” I’d be careful about committing the same sins you are accusing the press of, here.
SteveF: You’re right & I misread that.
The main spillway (according to Wikipedia) has a capacity of 150,000 cuft/second.
I hadn’t heard that. This is particularly stupid given they knew before using it, that there were issues with the auxiliary spillway.
Carrick,
I checked the primary spillway design capacity: 150,000 CuFt/sec. It is currently being limited to ~100,000 to reduce further damage to the primary spillway. Current inflow to the lake is ~36,000 CuFt/sec, so the lake level is falling. But more rain is predicted for tomorrow, and the managers want to lower the lake to 50 ft below the emergency overflow to accommodate much higher inflows after the rain. It seems unlikely they will succeed unless there is not much new rainfall.
.
Prior to the lake overflowing out the emergency spillway, discharge to the primary spillway had been limited (60,000 CuFt/second or less most of the time) to reduce the growing rate of damage to the primary spillway.
.
I am sure the managers are under a huge amount of pressure from all sides, and so their decisions may not be the best right now, but nobody seems to be talking about why the primary spillway failed.
Carrick,
Cross posted.
SteveF: “the primary spillway design capacity: 150,000 CuFt/sec”.
It is actually near double that. The 150,000 cfs number is the limit to prevent flooding of the Feather River.
Interesting point of comparison: The flow of the Mississippi at St. Louis (above the confluence with the Missouri) is 120,000 cfs.
.
SteveF: ” But more rain is predicted for tomorrow, and the manages want to lower the lake to 50 ft below the emergency overflow to accommodate much higher inflows after the rain. It seems unlikely they will succeed unless there is not much new rainfall.”
The situation is not as bad as we might guess. Mick West has posted some interesting graphs at https://www.metabunk.org/oroville-dam-spillway-failure.t8381/page-11.
.
SteveF: “nobody seems to be talking about why the primary spillway failed.”
It failed because of erosion of the ground underneath the spillway. The real question is why inspections did not head off the problem, especially since the same area had problems a few years ago.
Good article from Mises today asking about the responsibilities for these types of crises and how the blame is often shifted away. Could AGW be invoked here?
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bf16b152ccc444bdbbcc229e4&id=87a5044bba&e=b01c4ec581
Kenneth Fritsch,
I read about the three environmental groups that asked for reinforcement of the emergency spillway in 2005 too. That article ended up talking about the Trump infrastructure plan as well. But the White House says “Oroville is a textbook example’ of need for infrastructure repairs. That it is a Republican district may help.
Kenneth,
Lying about costs for a government construction project, I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked. Of course Pat Brown’s son, Jerry, continues in his father’s footsteps with the bullet train from nowhere to nowhere (currently) project.
The Mosul Dam in Iraq is also in serious trouble.