RUTHFULLY YOURS

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people.

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby.

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund.

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.

Now, some officials also want to consider taxing motorists for each mile they drive on the state’s antediluvian roads.

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.

In most areas of the Sierra Nevada, the state’s chief source of stored water, there is not a drop of snow on the ground. The High Sierra so far this year looks more like Death Valley than Alpine Switzerland.

The last two months of California weather were among the driest autumn months on record. Unless 2018 is a miraculously wet year, California will find itself on the cusp of another existential drought.

Yet California politicians are currently obsessed with the usual race/class/gender agendas, as Sacramento broadcasts that California is a sanctuary state exempt from federal immigration laws.

Periodically, Governor Jerry Brown, in prophetic Old Testament style, offers rebukes of President Donald Trump, as Brown tours the globe as commander in chief of California.

It is probably the most important date in United States history, but to most people Dec. 23 signifies only that there are two shopping days left until Christmas.

On that date in 1783, however, a remarkable event occurred.

After victoriously leading an army for more than eight years against the mightiest military force on the planet, Gen. George Washington walked before the Continental Congress and announced, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action …”

He had commanded an army clothed in rags, its soldiers so hungry they ate tree bark to fill their stomachs. They died from dysentery and starvation.

Here’s how author Ron Chernow describes it in his biography of the general: “There was scarcely a time during the war when Washington didn’t grapple with a crisis that threatened to disband the army and abort the Revolution. The extraordinary, wearisome, nerve-racking frustration he put up with for nearly nine years is hard to express. He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the 13 states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets and gunpowder.”

Each year his army would simply disappear as their enlistments expired meaning Washington had to start training them from scratch.

After the fighting had ended and before the peace was signed, King George III of England asked an acquaintance whether Washington would remain in charge of the army or become the new nation’s monarch. When told Washington’s aim was to simply give up his power and return to his farm, the king replied, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

He resigned in Annapolis, Maryland, and immediately set out for home. For the first time in eight years Washington returned to Mount Vernon for Christmas. It would be six years before he was elected the nation’s first president and once again called away from home.

In the history of the world there are a multitude of heroic military leaders who have led successful revolts against oppressors only to seize power themselves, becoming dictators and despots.

Put simply, this government of the people and by the people exists only because George Washington voluntarily gave up his power, first as the military leader and later as its chief of state.

Yet, there is no national holiday marking the occasion. No fireworks light the skies. The calendar does not even designate Dec. 23 as a day to fly the flag.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s closed-door interview with House Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday did not go well for him, Fox News’ James Rosen reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.

According to congressional sources, McCabe’s answers during his seven-hour interrogation conflicted with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting one House investigator to tell Fox News, “It’s hard to know who’s telling us the truth.”

The discrepancies have spurred Republican majority staff of the intel committee to issue fresh subpoenas next week for other Justice Department and FBI personnel.

Fox News reports that those personnel are likely to be “demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday’s HPSCI session.” Ohr — whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016 — is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee later this week, as well.

The questioning on Tuesday was led by Rep. Trey Gowdy, (R-SC) with several other lawmakers participating, according to Fox News. Gowdy, in particular, has been very keen to find out whether the FBI relied on the anti-Trump dossier to secure a FISA warrant to spy on President Trump and his associates. “I want to know whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency relied on a document that looks like the National Enquirer prepared it,” Gowdy said in October.

In what has to be a blow to the #RussiaGate crowd, the number two official in the FBI was apparently unable to cite which specific details in the dossier had been actually corroborated, after he told investigators that the bureau had verified some of the allegations. He also seemed to suffer from an attack of amnesia when asked about the Democratic funding of the dossier.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a “friendly witness” to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. “If he could have, he would have,” said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance. CONTINUE AT SITE

Alternative remedies like homeopathic treatments have become popular in recent years and now make up a $3 billion industry. But the Food and Drug Administration will begin scrutinizing products that could be dangerous to vulnerable populations.

Many homeopathic remedies are derived from plants and claim to treat everything from the common cold to serious diseases. But the FDA fears that these products can “bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse — may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren’t adequately tested or disclosed to patients,” according to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
In 1988, the FDA allowed for drugs that are labeled “homeopathic” to be marketed and sold without the agency’s approval, according to USA Today.

But recent issues concerning products for babies, including popular teething tablets, have led the agency to issue warnings. As a result, alternative treatments targeted at young children and those suffering from cancer, heart disease, and other serious ailments will be under heavier scrutiny by the agency.

Mark Land, the president of the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists, is concerned that this move by the FDA will affect “the ‘vast majority’ of homeopathic remedies available in the United States, according to NPR, but Gottlieb feels it is important to “protect the public from products that may not deliver any benefit and have the potential to cause harm.”

The new guidelines will be subject to a 90-day public comment period before becoming final. CONTINUE AT SITE

‘Certain grievances about Confederate memorials are legitimate. Others are steeped in a shocking level of ignorance. And that’s the problem evident even at this distance. Far from being guided by Lincoln’s better angels in human nature, the recent behaviour of some self-appointed moral sentinels appears more inclined to attention-seeking, stirring trouble, unsettling communities, causing division, feigning distress, staging shouting matches, and not caring an iota for historical truth.”
In New York, a church removed the plaque from a tree planted on its grounds by Robert E. Lee. That same day in far-off San Diego, the bronze dedication to Jefferson Davis was stripped from the highway which bears his name. Forgiveness and historical perspective are lately in very short supply.

They swung into hushed action in early morning a few months ago, just before 1.30 a.m. on Monday, April 24. A large contingent of New Orleans police barricaded off Iberville Street and Canal Place, temporary lighting was set up, and police snipers were stationed on a parking garage and other buildings with a clear view overlooking the Battle of Liberty Place monument.[1]

Then trucks and equipment from the demolition company arrived. On each vehicle the firm’s name and logo were concealed by masking tape and cardboard, while workers had been issued with bulletproof vests, yellow helmets and bandanas which they tied across their faces to prevent identification. A cherry-picker was carefully moved into place, with a tarpaulin positioned to obstruct view of actual work, then, at about 3.00 a.m. a couple of workmen, armed with grinders, started removing the top section of the obelisk.
This essay appears in the December edition of Quadrant.
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Once that first section had been levered away then dropped on a flatbed truck, at 3.15 a.m., the New Orleans mayor’s office issued a press statement formally announcing that the Battle of Liberty Place monument was being removed, and that another three divisive public statues—of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, of General Robert E. Lee, and of General P.G.T. Beauregard—would likewise be going in weeks to come. The statement explained that private funding from unnamed sources was paying for the work, and that “details about future statue removals will not be provided to the public” for safety reasons. The city mayor, Mitch Landrieu, emphasised that the removal “sends a clear and unequivocal message” about New Orleans’s focus on celebrating “our diversity, inclusion and tolerance”. He went on:

Relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, blame or retaliation. This is not a naive quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile—and most importantly—choose a better future.

The Jefferson Davis statue was whisked away on May 11, followed six days later by the equestrian statue of General Beauregard. The Robert E. Lee memorial looked like a tougher proposition. Modelled on Nelson’s Column in London, the general’s statue surveyed New Orleans from atop a sixty-foot column rising from a twelve-foot earth mound in a traffic island. The media confidently predicted a delay before complex work could occur. But only two days later the city council and police moved in a lightning operation, with a crane swinging the bronze figure free of its column on May 19.

It can be baffling for Australians to fathom present efforts in America seemingly to purge certain cities and towns of Civil War-related memorials. Why are statues being removed? Is art being censored? Are unpalatable aspects of history now to be erased? Various academics and artists here worry the trend resembles political correctness taken to extremes. Matters are not clarified by a sensationalist media which has reported contentious removals without explaining the deeper history of these memorials; because most have been the symbolic focus of bitter troubles festering in their communities for generations.

Take the Battle of Liberty Place monument in New Orleans. This commemorated an attempted armed coup in 1874 by a renegade group, the Democratic White League, which was seething at the result of Louisiana’s post-Civil War elections. Comprising former Confederate soldiers, League members deemed the elections invalid because blacks had been allowed to vote and stand as candidates.

So on September 19, 1874, the 5000-strong League rode en masse into New Orleans intending to unseat the state governor, William Kellogg, and his black lieutenant-governor, Caesar Antoine, both Republicans. In a pitched fire-fight on Canal Place, the League easily defeated the outnumbered city police and state militia, who sustained over 100 casualties. The League then occupied the state house, armoury and several nearby buildings, intent on taking control of the state and installing a white Democrat leadership. But after three days they fled the city when news broke that a sizable force of federal troops was on its way.

The unprecedented theft of thousands of likely privileged Trump transition emails by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s investigators is yet more proof that the open-ended fishing expedition is continuing to move forward with its effort to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

News of the misappropriation of the email tranches comes weeks after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) urged that Mueller quit or be fired, saying the independent prosecutor has “indisputable” conflicts of interest.

“We are at risk of a coup d’état in this country if we allow an unaccountable person with no oversight to undermine the duly-elected president of the United States,” Gaetz said, echoing earlier remarks by writer Michael Walsh who asserts the Left is engaged in a “rolling coup attempt” against President Trump.

Monday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” author Mark Steyn said, “I see no reason at all why a guy who is supposed to be investigating Russian interference in an election that took place on November the 8th should be able to seize, effectively, an incoming government’s entire confidential communications between each other in the period after the election took place. That seems to be entirely unwarranted by Mueller.”

Trump himself was more restrained in his rhetoric.

He said “a lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad,” in reference to the purloining of the transition records by Mueller’s office. “Not looking good. It’s not looking good,” Trump said.

“It’s quite sad to see that,” Trump said. “My people were very upset.”

“I can’t imagine there’s anything on them, because as we said there’s no collusion,” he added. “There was no collusion whatsoever.”

Until somebody delivers a coup de grâce to this disgraceful coup attempt, the push could last the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency. The end of the investigation is nowhere in sight. Although White House lawyers had said Mueller’s probe would conclude by year’s end, members of the independent prosecutor’s team reportedly said recently that the investigation will spill over into 2018 – at least.

Commissioned to investigate the Left’s ridiculous Trump-Russia electoral collusion conspiracy theory, Mueller, with his scorched-earth, shock-and-awe tactics, remains the Left’s best hope to drive the 45th president of the United States from the White House. Democrats still refuse to accept that the irretrievably corrupt Democrat Hillary Clinton was flattened by Republican Trump in the election 13 months ago. Working with the Deep State, former President Obama launched his own insurrection against the Trump administration even before it came into being.

The Trump team is probably not going to seek to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To do so would be to provoke Trump’s crucial supporters in Congress. Instead, they seem to be seeking to discredit him and his investigation. This is apparently designed to achieve two possible results: the first is to put pressure on the Special Prosecutor to lean over backwards in order to avoid any accusation of bias against Trump and his team. Mueller cares deeply about his reputation for integrity and will want to emerge from this process with that reputation intact. Accordingly, he may err – consciously or unconsciously – in favor of Trump in close cases so that the public will regard him as unbiased and fair-minded.

This is a classic tactic used by lawyers, athletic coaches, business people and others in how they deal with decision makers. The great Red Auerbach, former coach of the Boston Celtics, once told me that when he screams loudly at officials, he generally gets the next close call in his favor. I have heard the same from baseball managers regarding balls and strikes.

This is a somewhat risky strategy in the context of law, because attacking the decision maker could also backfire. Whoever thinks about using this tactic should understand the particular decision maker against whom it is directed. Mueller seems like an appropriate target because of his concern for his reputation for fairness.

Even if this tactic were not to work, the attack on Mueller gives the Trump team some legal weaponry in the event of an indictment or a recommendation for impeachment. If a significant portion of the country believes that the Special Counsel was unfair, this could help in legal proceedings before judges or jurors.

So attacking Mueller may appear to be a win-win tactic for the team – certainly a lot better than firing Mueller. Fortunately for the Trump team, Mueller has played into their hands by his sloppiness in conducting the investigation. He has been incautious with his choice of personnel – too many of them seem biased against Trump, not only by their backgrounds, but by their tweets and messages. When you go after a President, you must be Caesar’s wife – above suspicion or reproach. Mueller seems to be failing the Caesar’s wife test. Moreover, the manner by which he acquired emails and other documents from the Trump transition team may raise some legal questions. The same may be true if he used the questionable dossier against Trump as a basis for securing warrants.

It says much about the state of America that the fatal train derailment in Tacoma, Washington virtually overshadowed the unveiling of President Donald Trump’s “America First” national security strategy in Washington, D.C. Trump opened his speech with condolences to the families of the three people killed and dozens wounded in the Amtrak crash. “It is all the more reason why we must first start by repairing the infrastructure of the United States,” Trump said, referring to the devastating crash.

Indeed, a “complete rebuilding of America’s infrastructure” is a key ingredient of one of his new strategy’s four pillars—“promoting American prosperity.” As Trump spoke, firefighters in California were battling blazes in Ventura and Santa Barbara. In Atlanta, at the world’s busiest airport, hundreds of stranded passengers were struggling to reschedule flights after a total power outage grounded flights and plunged the airport into darkness for hours. Large sections of Puerto Rico remained without reliable power months after a deadly hurricane. And federal officials from the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to Tacoma to investigate the cause of the crash of the Amtrak train on its inaugural trip.

President Trump’s remarks contained few specifics about how he intends to pay for his total infrastructure rebuilding, or implement his other three national security pillars—protecting the American people and homeland (by building a wall and restricting immigration); preserving peace through strength (by rebuilding the military and constructing a missile defense system); and advancing American influence abroad (through economic growth via creative diplomacy, using “all tools of statecraft”). But the president’s 55-page national strategy document, at least ten pages longer than President Obama’s 2010 opus, reads in many ways like a document that most of his predecessors could have written.

That came as a relief to foreign policy guru Peter Feaver, among others. “One of the major concerns about President Trump is that he has at times seemed so bent on breaking with establishment precedent that he has failed to appreciate just how much of what has made American great has been the produce of these core establishment ideas and institutions,” wrote Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke and coeditor of Foreign Policy’s “Elephants in the Room” blog.

In some ways, Trump’s speech, and especially the administration’s first strategy document, seem to backpedal from some of his earlier, more abrasive policies and utterances. The policy statement and especially the speech introducing it reflect the Trump foreign policy’s inward, sometimes isolationist focus and the importance it places on projecting power by rebuilding economic strength at home and defending the nation’s physical, intellectual, and cyber property and borders. The document calls Russia and China “rival nations” that “seek to challenge American influence, values and wealth.” While neither Trump’s speech nor his national security plan mentions alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the strategy document accuses Russia of “using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies.” This criticism was only partially undercut by Trump’s reference to a call that he received Sunday from Russian president Vladimir Putin to thank him for having shared CIA intelligence that Trump said helped Russia foil a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg. “That’s a great thing,” the president said, “and the way it’s supposed to work.”

The tax reform that will pass Congress Wednesday fulfills a major Republican campaign promise, but more important is that it marks a return to the politics of growth after many lean years of envy and income redistribution. It offers hope of broader prosperity after a decade of slow growth and rising inequality.

On the merits, the bill is the most pro-growth tax policy since the Reagan reforms of 1981 and 1986. We should add that it is not as good for individual taxpayers as those two acts. The bill cuts marginal tax rates only a little for individuals, and that will temper its growth impact. The politics of envy that has dominated American politics since the mid-2000s has also infected many Republicans, especially its Beltway intellectual class.

This reform will rise or fall on its business tax changes, and those are arguably superior to the 1986 act. The corporate rate cut to 21% from 35% solves a core problem of U.S. economic and business competitiveness. Along with 100% expensing, the rate cut slashes the cost of capital enough to cause CEOs to think again about America as a place to invest. Sweeping away many (alas, not all) special tax breaks means fewer incentives to misallocate capital.

The timing may also be right in giving this already long expansion a second wind. The Obama expansion has been so tepid in part due to historically slow capital investment, and deregulation and tax reform are policy levers designed to revive it.

The economists who gave us the slow Obama economy now say this reform is ill-timed, but they look only at the demand side of the economy. They ignore the bill’s supply-side incentives to increase the economy’s productive capacity. These incentives will be all the more important as the Federal Reserve moves to normalize the monetary policies that lifted stocks and other asset prices during the Obama years. The Obama policy mix helped the affluent who had assets, while faster growth should spread prosperity more broadly.

Will it work? There are wild cards to watch like the Fed, national security shocks and Donald Trump’s trade policy. But measured by business sentiment, the portents are good. The National Federation of Independent Business confidence index hit an all-time record in November, while optimism among manufacturers hit an unprecedented high in the fourth quarter. Mr. Trump is mistaken to focus so much on the stock market, since corrections are inevitable. But the market’s rise since Election Day in 2016 isn’t a political levitation act. It’s an omen of confidence in higher earnings and faster growth.

As for the politics, reform’s passage shows the GOP’s growth wing is still prominent. This was no sure thing as conservative wonks fell for policy fads and sneered at pro-growth reform as irrelevant to the needs of the working class. In the end they watered down the reform but couldn’t hijack it.

This is a credit in particular to the successive House Ways and Means Chairmen who negotiated the reform tradeoffs. Dave Camp, Paul Ryan and Kevin Brady persisted through years of political setbacks for this moment, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shrewdly tapped Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to maneuver the bill through the Budget and (with Orrin Hatch ) Finance committees. These are examples of how individual legislators make a difference.

The victory is also a vindication for these and other Republicans who resisted the advice not to work with President Trump. The GOP is supposedly forever morally tainted by trying to pass the agenda it ran on because Mr. Trump is, well, you know. But voters who elected a Republican Congress want results that are good for the country, and Americans shouldn’t suffer for four years because voters preferred Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump deserves credit for selling reform and working with Congress to pass it.

Republicans succeeded despite a narrow Senate majority, no help from Democrats, and the near-universal hostility of the Beltway press. They also had to overcome the Keynesian bias embedded in such institutions as the Congressional Budget Office and Tax Policy Center that are treated as policy oracles when they merely offer guesses about policy outcomes that are often wrong. At least growth conservatives had the Tax Foundation as a counter-weight, but sooner or later they need to repeal the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

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The media are now chortling with Democrat Chuck Schumer that Republicans will “rue the day” they passed this. Actual CNN headline: “Public opposition to tax bill grows as vote approaches.”

But we’d dislike this bill too if all we knew was what the media reported. The polls show that most Americans don’t even think they’ll get a tax cut, when nearly all taxpayers will. Perhaps voters will find that irrelevant in 2018, but the result is certainly better for Republicans than explaining another legislative failure. The far more important payoff will be for the country if the result is a return to faster growth that lifts wages and American confidence.