About those Supreme Court picks

One argument for Trump was that he’d promote Supreme Court choices that would do a better job protecting our liberties (compared to the sort of people that Hillary would have nominated.)  That remains to be seen.  But one thing is clear, if Trump’s Supreme Court picks are to protect our freedom, they will have to rule against Trump on many, many issues. Here’s a list of items from just the past two days:

1.  Trump proposes jailing flag burners.  (Yes, Hillary also voted for the idea, but probably had no interest in advocating it as president.)

2.  Trump made it very clear that business leaders in America are no longer free to locate production facilities in places that make the most sense from an efficiency perspective.  He will use the power of the presidency to punish those who defy him.

3.  Trump will make the already Orwellian NSA even worse:

The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition.

Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies — Republican Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general and Republican Representative Mike Pompeo for director of the Central Intelligence Agency — are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

I don’t want to oversell the importance of these three issues—the flag comments were probably just red meat for his base, and the other two items merely worsen the current governmental overreach in those areas.  But these are just a small indication of what will come next.  There will be dozens more such repressive initiatives, as Trump has never shown the slightest interest in classical liberal ideas, either before or during his campaign.

Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues?  I doubt it.

 


Tags:

 
 
 

69 Responses to “About those Supreme Court picks”

  1. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    30. November 2016 at 12:08


    Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues?

    There are practical problems with this theory: It seems Trump himself doesn’t even know his positions on most issues, so how would the judge know them?

    Trump is a unicum, he won’t find a judge that resembles him.

    For Trump family relationships seem to be really important (way more important than issues), so I bet Trump would love to nominate his sister despite her being even older than him.

  2. Gravatar of Massimo Heitor Massimo Heitor
    30. November 2016 at 12:55

    Sumner is exaggerating. Trump is verbally bad mouthing companies who move production, jobs, and wealth outside of the US. That isn’t remotely the same as removing their rights to do so.

    Obama famously bad mouthed companies who left the US for tax reasons. That is the same general behavior. So Trump isn’t necessarily even worse in this regard.

    I generally agree with Sumner that companies should have full freedom, ideally without even guilt or bad mouthing to move their jobs and production where it benefits their interests. Simultaneously, the people of the US should want a competitive environment where employers want to hire our workers and conduct their research and production activities here and even store their capital here. I also agree with Sumner in opposing flag burning punishments, although I suspect Trump won’t seriously pursue that too far, and I don’t care if Trump bad mouths flag burners.

    I would like Sumner’s reaction to Trump’s cabinet picks thus far: Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, Stephen Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Ben Carson, Tom Price, Elaine Chao, Betsy DeVos, Steven Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross.

    From what I gather, the principled conservative types, like Charles Cooke at National Review are overwhelmingly happy with cabinet picks but bothered by twitter comments. The former seem far more important.

    Based on Trump’s cabinet picks of mostly principled conservatives, I have high confidence of great supreme court picks as well like the ones he suggested on his list.

    “Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues?”

    Yes. Trump will absolutely pick justices that will rule against some of the poorly thought out ideas he has floated. Trump will probably pick justices that won’t support jailing flag burners for example, and Trump probably is quite comfortable with that. He may still bad mouth flag burners in public and maybe make more casual threats that he isn’t serious about following through with. That really doesn’t seem like a bad outcome.

  3. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 13:08

    so I bet Trump would love to nominate his sister despite her being even older than him.

    She’s 79 and retired a number of years ago. Not happening.

    Trump is right to criticize the 1989 court decision in question. The notion of ‘speech-acts’ is a half-baked idea that needs to go away.

  4. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 13:09

    Charles Cooke is a British expat libertarian, not a conservative, principled or otherwise. Like every other product of Oxbridge, he’s a nuisance.

  5. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 13:12

    Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues? I doubt it.

    Every Republican president who has nominated anyone to the court in the last 80 years has been embarrassed by his appointments, with the exception of Gerald Ford, who seems to have been completely vacuous on the subject. There are no red states in the judiciary.

  6. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 13:13

    I’ll correct myself: John Roberts and Samuel Alito haven’t done anything egregious….yet.

  7. Gravatar of Acebojangles Acebojangles
    30. November 2016 at 13:29

    Are principled conservatives happy with Goldman alums in the cabinet posts? That led to a gigantic government bailout less than a decade ago.

  8. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    30. November 2016 at 15:44

    I found something, I… a Trump hater to the core…could relly get behind trump on….
    trump’s treasury secretary says any tax cuts for the top earners will be revenue neutral… (cool bean to the max dudes… though I’d’ prefer higher taxes on them )

    does anyone believe that ? It’s a huge betrayal to the segment of the elite who backed him… but I think most of his rank and file would approve…they did not concern themselves with such things…

    To do it trump will have to fight the Repub controlled congress…

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-mnuchin-trump-tax-policy

    wouldn’t it be nuts …the biggest joke ever played on Americans.. if trump flip-flopped himself into a being liberal Keynesian ?

    I know…I know..but can dream… right now I’m just hoping that his cabinet doesn’t turn into the incoherent mess it looks like it is going to…

    Markets = information.
    Good and stable information = a healthy market.
    Bad and inconsistent information = a sick market.
    The most influential nation on earth putting out fucked up info = ???

  9. Gravatar of B Cole B Cole
    30. November 2016 at 16:42

    Bill Ellis:

    “Steve Mnuchin, President-elect Donald Trump’s newly-minted pick for treasury secretary, said Wednesday that any upper-income tax cuts enacted by Trump would be offset by eliminating tax deductions.

    “Any reductions we have in upper income taxes would be offset by less deductions so there would be no absolute tax cut for the upper class,” Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

    Mnuchin argued it was “not the case at all” that most of Trump’s proposed tax cuts would benefit the upper class.

    “There will be a big tax cut for the middle class, but any tax cuts we have for the upper class would be offset by less deductions that pay for it,” he said.”

    —30—

    True, Mnuchin said that.

    Lot of miles to go before a tax bill gets through a GOP Congress and then gets implemented.

    And we are light years away from any proposals to shift taxes off of income and onto consumption, fossil fuels, Pigou and imports.

  10. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    30. November 2016 at 16:48

    Well, Reagan gave us Anthony Kennedy. Bush I nominated David Souter. Geo. W. put John Roberts–who somehow managed to rewrite the actual text of Obamacare in his majority opinion–on the Supreme Court.

    So, it would hardly be surprising if a Trump nominee voted against whatever it is that he believes in. Which is a problem Democrat Presidents never seem to have.

  11. Gravatar of Banned Norse Warrior Banned Norse Warrior
    30. November 2016 at 17:37

    Hey Art Deco, ScotusCare by Roberts is not a big embarrassment?

    Professor Sumner: would or wouldn’t a ban on direct foreign investment eliminate the trade deficit?

    I can understand such a draconian step is not seriously considered, as it would hasten the day of reckoning regarding the federal budget deficit, but why are no fiscal conservatives even mentioning this possibility? Perhaps nobody with real power is a fiscal conservative?

  12. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    30. November 2016 at 17:44

    Christian List,

    “For Trump family relationships seem to be really important (way more important than issues)”

    That alone is one of the most devastating assessments of Trumpism. The West’s flagship country went from rule-based to clannish with a flip of the switch.

  13. Gravatar of DirtyDawg DirtyDawg
    30. November 2016 at 18:04

    I wish you had mentioned rights of the accused, immigration and mass incarceration. These are bigger problems with conservative court appointees.

  14. Gravatar of XVO XVO
    30. November 2016 at 18:22

    Sour grapes. Scott admit it, he’s been the best libertarian president since Coolidge so far. Anyways we’ll have to judge him by his actions not his deeds. So far he’s been doing pretty good, better than I expected.

    Calvin Coolidge was apparently the best President ever (in his own words, and by his own deeds). http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/top-10-libertarian-presidents/10/

    Too bad that fascist Roosevelt came along.

  15. Gravatar of dwb dwb
    30. November 2016 at 18:35

    “Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues? I doubt it.”

    Hard to say, the analysis here is shoddy and superficial. First, about 70% of Supreme Court cases are decided 9-0.

    Second, there is a really long list of court cases where a justice in question ruled against the administration who appointed them. Obama has been shot down unanimously something like four dozen times. His own picks (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) have ruled against him. 44 times in fact (according to The Federalist). Roberts famously ruled in favor of Obamacare.

    If Trump nominates an originalist justice, in the mold of Scalia, then there is nothing to worry about. Scalia thought flag burning was disgusting and despicable, but also protected. The American public is mostly against flag burning, Colin Kapernick, and also parading through small jewish towns in Nazi garb. Thankfully we live in a constitutional republic, where burning flags and parading around with swastikas is protected – not a mob driven democracy like France or Germany, where they are not (burqas can be banned too, those Euro-islamophobes!). Here in America, freedom means the right to be stupid and annoying.

    Unless you are a Trump supporter of course. They are just deranged and deplorable.

    There is so much wrong with #2 I wont even address it.

  16. Gravatar of Massimo Heitor Massimo Heitor
    30. November 2016 at 18:45

    @Art,

    “Charles Cooke is a British expat libertarian, not a conservative, principled or otherwise.”

    Ronald Reagan famously said, “the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism”. Cooke titled his book, “The Conservatarian Manifesto” and lead with that quote.

    How would you otherwise distinguish between libertarian/conservative? In practice, the two are frequently indistinguishable. The definitions are different: the libertarian is dedicated to minimal government and individual liberty while the conservative “stands athwart history, yelling stop”.

    “John Roberts and Samuel Alito haven’t done anything egregious….yet.”

    Those are pretty strict standards. Don’t most right wing types love those two? And maybe Clarence Thomas? And the late Scalia?

  17. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    30. November 2016 at 19:16

    “The West’s flagship country went from rule-based to clannish with a flip of the switch.”

    -If I remember correctly, it was Fred Trump who was president of the United States during the 1990s.

  18. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 19:16

    The West’s flagship country went from rule-based to clannish with a flip of the switch.

    If you fancy the current administration is ‘rule-based’, you haven’t been paying attention.

  19. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    30. November 2016 at 19:22

    How would you otherwise distinguish between libertarian/conservative? In practice, the two are frequently indistinguishable. The definitions are different: the libertarian is dedicated to minimal government and individual liberty while the conservative “stands athwart history, yelling stop”.

    Gottfried Dietze is dead. Milton Friedman is dead. Ayn Rand is dead. Richard Epstein is 73 years old. Ron Paul plays the conceited goofball. As we speak, actually existing libertarianism has decayed into adolescent whinging about the drug laws, open borders nonsense, bitching about cops, and pathetic displays of status anxiety.

  20. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    30. November 2016 at 20:03

    “…business leaders in America are no longer free to locate production facilities in places that make the most sense from an efficiency perspective.”

    This is a silly interpretation on multiple levels.

    1. Businesses are NOW not “free to locate production facilities”. We are not living in a free market. There are existing regulations which you are clearly ignoring. Saying “no longer” falsely implies that last month businesses were free. Which leads to:

    2. The current location of businesses has not been established on the basis of “efficiency” with respect to satisfying consumer demand. They have been set as a combination of government intervention, and within the modicum of remaining choice, with the (hampered) consumer demand. Saying “efficiency perspective” implies that the world only contains market forces.

    With NAFTA and other coercive, anti-market regulations adversely affecting business investment, including location of business investment, it could very well be the case that “efficiency” demands that companies like Apple, Carrier and Ford invest in American labor instead! Now to be sure, if that were the case, it is not as if what Trump said or promised to do had anything to do with presenting the business owners with a lasses faire market, in which they then decided to not “moe jobs to Mexico”. We’re talking government force to allegedly “fix” government force.

    But what cannot be claimed is that the loss of jobs in America that were associated with new jobs in foreign countries, were all without exception the result of “market based efficiency”. NAFTA, if you actually read the agreement, is not only not about free trade, but more specifically it increased man exploiting man, of gains being made with losses occurring elsewhere, instead of gains being made by all. NAFTA has positively harmed American workers and businessmen. Not necessarily in the temporal, “we’re absolutely poorer today than in the past” empiricist nonsense interpretation, but in the economic sense, in the counter-factual sense. Americans are poorer today because of NAFTA than they otherwise would have been without it. Te proposed TPP would have made things even worse.

    So the most you can say about what Trump is doing is not suddenly eradicating “efficiency” where before there was “efficiency”, but only more intervention to solve previous intervention. Presidents do not produce anything.

    The only thing Trump or any President can do to increase “efficiency” is eliminating regulations, period. And, Trup has proposed a law whereby any new legislation made by government, has to be accompanied by removing TWO existing legislations. As a self-described but not actual libertarian, you should virtue signal your support for that idea.

  21. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    30. November 2016 at 20:47

    Sumner’s failure to detect/perceive/understand the existing regulations which make it impossible for capital allocation to be driven by “efficiency” is what I like to call the “frog in the pot of water” epistemology. The academic term is Fabian socialism.

    With gradual as opposed to universal socialist encroachment, what Stalin called the “useful idiots” will be uninterested in, and sometimes hostile towards, all of course in the various iterative names of pragmatism, utilitarianism, and so forth, significant movements towards individual liberty. And, just as importantly, it becomes much more difficult a task for the dim witted to identify just how much of individual liberty has been destroyed.

    With gradual, bit by bit legislating away of individual liberties, at any one time should there be some regulatory change that consists of more government power, there are cries and hysteria from pundits who frame it as “OK now we’ve lost liberty”, or “we can no longer choose on the basis of efficiency”, or “Say goodbye to liberalism and say hello to fascism”. All of this rhetoric is a result of frogs not realizing the water they’re in has been steadily heating up for quite some time.

    Sumner is going to have a rough next 4 years if he keeps losing it with every Trump Tweet. Good lord. I’m so happy I am an anarchy-capitalist. I don’t have to virtue signal or pretend or experience the level of cognitive dissonance as what occurs in this cesspool of a blog.

  22. Gravatar of BC BC
    30. November 2016 at 23:25

    “Will Trump nominate Supreme Court justices that will rule against him on a wide variety of issues? I doubt it.”

    The markets right now seem to think that the only serious contenders are the ones from his list of 21, with the exception of Ted Cruz: [https://www.predictit.org/Market/2198/Who-will-be-the-next-confirmed-Supreme-Court-justice]. My understanding is that the list of 21 are all Heritage Foundation approved constitutionalists, so I’m guessing that they would protect flag burning under the first amendment.

    If Trump deviates from the list, my guess is that it would be for personal or other reasons unrelated to his views on political issues. For example, he might appoint a personal friend or business associate or a judge favored by a personal friend, business associate, or politician as part of some deal.

    On Carrier, I think the bigger threat is what Justin Wolfers pointed out: companies might threaten to move to Mexico to gain some inducement to stay [https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/803770794765651968]

  23. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    1. December 2016 at 02:06

    Everyone, LOL at all the libertarians who drank the kool-aid and now have their heads in the sand.

    Massimo, You said:

    “Trump is verbally bad mouthing companies who move production, jobs, and wealth outside of the US.”

    That’s enough of a threat to change behavior, given that these companies cannot afford to anger the president, who can then retaliate. I said this was nothing new, but was worse than previous presidents. And indeed it is far worse than Obama discouraging tax inversion.

    XVO, Some comments are so stupid I can’t tell if people are being sarcastic. Sessions, Pompeo, Flynn, yeah those are Coolidge-type picks.

    Dirtydawg, I fully agree, and expect more repressive moves in those areas.

    BC, Good point, that’s an additional threat. But this is a serious problem even if that does not occur. This is just one company, but it suggests Trump is serious about his protectionism. And the stuff Trump people are saying about trade deficits is probably the stupidest set of comments I’ve heard from top administration officials in my entire life. “All trade deficits are bad” would get you flunked out of any EC101 course in America. It’s just laughably stupid.

  24. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    1. December 2016 at 02:50

    @mbka
    I think the President should be able to appoint into his team whoever he wants to. It should be up to the President to decide which people can help him best in doing his job. He is the only person that can really make this decision, there is no substitute. When you want to limit this essential power of the President you should name good reasons for it. (Hint: LBJ’s hate for JFK is not a good reason.)


    The West’s flagship country went from rule-based to clannish with a flip of the switch.

    I think that’s just dull partisan hackery. You didn’t write something like this when Clan Bush or Clan Clinton was ruling. And now “with a flip of a switch” you (and the media) “discovered” clans. I really wonder what happened? What has changed during the last month?

    I don’t have a problem with clans in government per se as long as the voter remains in power. I think in case of the executive team of the President this power is more than given because the US got important elections in the executive (or legislative) branch every two years. These elections are important “checks” for the President and his government.

    I see a general problem in the Judicative system though. All judges should be up for re-elections as well. Additionally a maximum term limit can be discussed, too. US Supreme Court Justices are the kings and popes of America. I don’t think that’s good in a democracy. There are checks and balances for the President and the Legislative but who is checking the Justices, once they are in power? No one is.

  25. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    1. December 2016 at 05:17

    ‘And the stuff Trump people are saying about trade deficits is probably the stupidest set of comments I’ve heard from top administration officials in my entire life.’

    Oh, worse than, ‘Profits eat up overhead’?

    To take just one example from the recent past.

  26. Gravatar of B Cole B Cole
    1. December 2016 at 05:25

    Clinton’s lead in popular vote passes 2.5 million.

    To some it is just trivia: Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote lead over Mr. Trump reached 2,526,184 — five times Al Gore’s lead over George W. Bush in 2000. At 1.9 percentage points, her lead is now larger than those of 10 presidents, and it is approaching Jimmy Carter’s margin over Gerald Ford in 1976.

    —30—

    In colonial Upper Volta I think tjete wete similar election systems to present-day USA

  27. Gravatar of Todd Ramsey Todd Ramsey
    1. December 2016 at 07:26

    Your views and blog on monetary policy are moving the needle towards improving the welfare of mankind. Rarely does one man have so much sway on changing the course of world affairs. Thank you!

    I hope you don’t squander this opportunity by letting Donald Trump take your mindshare from what is truly important. Please!

  28. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    1. December 2016 at 07:48

    Christian List,

    I think that’s just dull partisan hackery. You didn’t write something like this when Clan Bush or Clan Clinton was ruling.

    You’re the one who remarked that Trump seems to favor his own family for posts of influence, and he sure does. Clintons and Bushes followed each other. But that is a very different constellation. At best you can accuse them of dynastic behavior if you want to. But even so, the voter had a say. They did not hire each other. If Trump hires his family, or gives them undue political influence, the voter does not have a say and it sure looks like nepotism.

    Your kinds of comments are a good example of general lack of logic and complete confusion on what is actually going on. No, politicians are not all equally bad. Some are much worse than the rest.

  29. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    1. December 2016 at 07:50

    B Cole,

    the Upper Volta jokes are really, really bad taste. What did Upper Volta do to you?

  30. Gravatar of Student Student
    1. December 2016 at 08:11

    Trump the libertarian, hahahaha. Smoke another bowl peeps…. and before Donald J Duterte and Jeff Sessions Anslinger ride their deportation forces into town with their registries and provide some liberty with some Billy clubs.

    Ok that’s an exaggeration (I hope) but the dude is no friend of liberty… unless by liberty you mean his freedom to extract resources from others by whatever means are necessary.

  31. Gravatar of Massimo Heitor Massimo Heitor
    1. December 2016 at 11:35

    @Acebojangles,

    People are worried about Bannon for a variety of reasons, but his Goldman Sachs history is not one of them. Personally, I’m a big Breitbart fan, a big alt-right fan, and I’m excited about Bannon.

  32. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    1. December 2016 at 13:04

    Prediction

    Scott will at some point in the next four years state that the outcomes during the Trump administration are good. He will also say “it would have been better if he had not done X, Y and Z”.

  33. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    1. December 2016 at 13:36


    You’re the one who remarked…

    Yes but unlike you I was trying not to be judgmental.


    But that is a very different constellation.

    That’s exactly what I mean. Sure, you are right, for a partisan guy the situation is always “very different”, depending on which side is involved.


    They did not hire each other.

    Sure they did not. Better don’t ask Hillary about that.


    the voter does not have a say

    I already said the opposite is true. The voter remains in power. There are major elections every two years. Not to mention the constant pressure through public opinion and the media. That’s more than enough. What else do you want?


    Your kinds of comments are a good example of general lack of logic and complete confusion on what is actually going on.

    Your kind of comments are a good example of your arrogance. You don’t seem to know too much about this topic but the less you know of something the more you seem to be convinced of yourself.


    No, politicians are not all equally bad. Some are much worse than the rest.

    Your platitudes are astonishing.

  34. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    1. December 2016 at 15:38

    Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.

    Stein votes/Trump margin:
    MI: 51,463/10,704
    PA: 49,678/46,765
    WI: 31,006/22,177

    https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/804407177368715265

    Considering this and the fact that Stein pushes so hard for recounts, she seems to think that it is unimportant who will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.

    Well Stein might be wrong. In a democracy the actual act of voting can be quite important. But pssst, don’t tell her.

  35. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    1. December 2016 at 16:23

    According to Daniel Henninger in the WSJ, Trump is talking to Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society about his SCOTUS pick.

    And his pick to run Medicaid is interesting–an ally of Mike Pence;

    http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/29/503762324/trump-picks-seema-verma-to-run-medicare-and-medicaid

    ————–quote————–
    He picked Rep. Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services and tapped Seema Verma, a health care consultant, to head the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s the part of HHS that oversees Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and has a budget of just under a trillion dollars in 2016.

    Verma comes to the job with extensive Medicaid experience. Her consulting firm, SVC, Inc., worked closely with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to design Indiana’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. The expansion, known as the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, went into effect early last year, and Verma’s involvement in it may prove important as Congress and the Trump administration, including the Vice-president elect, make decisions on the future of Obamacare.

    Indiana’s unique Medicaid expansion was designed to appeal to conservatives. HIP 2.0 asks covered people to make a small monthly payment to access health insurance. A missed payment can result in six-month lockout from insurance coverage. Those provisions aren’t allowed under traditional Medicaid, but Indiana got a federal waiver to implement them.
    —————-endquote——————

  36. Gravatar of Student Student
    1. December 2016 at 17:28

    Am I watching the WWE or a president elect? I really can’t believe this is a president elect giving this speech right now.

  37. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    1. December 2016 at 17:54

    Trump’s first “deal” sold out the average American tax payer to help his fellow billionaires…
    Trump to Carrier…. “Hey! Fellow Billionaires…You don’t have to send those jobs overseas to put more money in your bank account… I’ll just have the average American Taxpayer pick up the bill for the difference !”
    who wouldn’t take that deal ?
    Now why was it that people thought a billionaire would be an enemy of billionaires ?

  38. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    1. December 2016 at 18:16

    Trump…making the Average American Taxpayer the elite’s cucks… A lot of us are watching our liberty getting f’ed over… and some of us…the trump supporters among us… are enjoying it…

    America is pretty sick right now…

  39. Gravatar of Massimo Heitor Massimo Heitor
    1. December 2016 at 18:26

    “Gottfried Dietze is dead. Milton Friedman is dead. Ayn Rand is dead. Richard Epstein is 73 years old. Ron Paul plays the conceited goofball. As we speak, actually existing libertarianism has decayed into adolescent whinging about the drug laws, open borders nonsense, bitching about cops, and pathetic displays of status anxiety.”

    @Art, this is grouchy even for you. Rand, Friedman, Dietze were born in 1905, 1912, 1922. People born that long ago are pretty much all dead. There is absolutely a new generation of younger conservatives and libertarians.

  40. Gravatar of Student Student
    1. December 2016 at 19:31

    You know what’s funny is how the scared of everything the alt-right is and how they are willing to sacrifice to the idol that is authoritarianism in order to maintain or recapture their perceived decline in social status. You are obsessed with material things and see the world as a zero sum game.

    You don’t care about anyone else (save for maybe… maybe… those you see as mirror images of yourselves) and you are all scrambling to climb the mountain and be on top. You are slaves to materialism and because you see your “group” as losing you seek to find scapegoats and saviors to take things back to the way you think they used to be.

    And your willing to bury your heads in the sand and ignore the fact your getting conned with the hope that your savior will put others back in their place.

  41. Gravatar of Student Student
    1. December 2016 at 19:32

    The only thing as annoying as this IMO are those on the religious right that no nothing about the teachings of the one they purport to follow.

  42. Gravatar of mbka mbka
    1. December 2016 at 19:33

    Christian List,

    So there’s no functional difference between people of the same family following each other but going through elections beforehand, and people of the same family directly hiring the other? You’re the best example of an apparently intelligent person who can’t think. You just lash out and pepper it all over with boilerplate “the arrogance of the elites…” kind of blah.

    There is a good reason btw why countries have elites – the elites do things well. And countries with the best elite selection processes, Singapore comes to mind, are also the best governed. Even a place like Russia, of all places, has remarkably stable elites. The US by contrast comes across as panem et circenses with emphasis on circenses.

    Insert quote from the movie “Bulworth”: “I tell the people what they want to hear / I make them laugh and cheer / And then they re-elect me every year”. Sure sounds like somebody in the news recently.

  43. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    1. December 2016 at 20:37

    mbka:

    The worst thing Upper Volta did was change its name to Burkino Faso. For decades I kept Upper Volta in my vocabulary as distant improbable land, made all the better as there was no Lower Volta. No one ever heard of Burkino Faso.

    For all I know, elections in the old Upper Volta were more meaningful than the just-completed national “election” in the U.S.

    ……..

    Re Scott Sumner and “And the stuff Trump people are saying about trade deficits is probably the stupidest set of comments I’ve heard from top administration officials in my entire life.”

    Oh, Scott, Scott, Scott–were you sleeping in the Nixon and Reagan days?

    Richard Nixon

    141 – Statement on the Balance of Payments.
    April 4, 1969

    Public Papers of the Presidents
    Richard Nixon1969

    “In my fiscal message to the Congress on March 26, I called for a strong budget surplus and monetary restraint to curb an inflation that has been allowed to run into its fourth year. This is fundamental economics, and I pointed out that we intend to deal with fundamentals.

    Similarly, the problem of regaining equilibrium in the U.S. balance of payments cannot be solved with expedients that postpone the problem to another year. We shall stop treating symptoms and start treating causes, and we shall find our solutions in the framework of freer trade and payments.

    Fundamental economics call for:

    –creating the conditions that make it possible to rebuild our trade surplus.

    –ultimate dismantling of the network of direct controls which may seem useful in the short run but are self-defeating in the long run.

    The U.S. balance of payments showed a surplus last year. But this surplus included an unusually high and probably unsustainable capital inflow. Our trade surplus, which reached a peak of $6.5 billion in the mid-sixties, declined sharply and all but disappeared….”

    —30—

    Reagan from Sept. 7 1985

    “Therefore, I’m directing the U.S. Trade Representative to start proceedings in three cases of unfair trade: one, against a Korean law that prohibits fair competition of U.S. life and fire insurance firms in the Korean market in direct contradiction of treaty obligations; two, against a Brazilian law that has restricted U.S. exports of computers and related products and squeezed out some American computer firms operating there; and three, against restrictive practices dealing with tobacco products in Japan that unfairly block U.S. entry into that market. I’ve also ordered acceleration of ongoing efforts to open up Japanese markets in leather and leather footwear and to challenge the European Community’s subsidies on canned fruit. On these two cases we’re setting a deadline of December 1, 1985. I have directed that a list be prepared of countermeasures which will be taken if these disputes are not resolved by then.

    We hope that through these negotiations we will be able to convince our trading partners to stop their unfair trading practices and open those markets that are now closed to American exports.”

    —30—

    Worth reading:

    The Reagan Record On Trade: Rhetoric Vs. Reality – Cato Institute
    https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa107.html

    Reagan was in deed a much more ferocious protectionist than the Trumpsters have even talked about, or Cato seems to think so.

    i will say this: Trump puts a low-brow spin on everything Reagan said in his courtly way, or everything Nixon said in his middle-brow approach…

    It is a perfect fit that Trump built American-style casinos, of glamorous magnified kitsch. Just wait until Melania redecorates the White House…

    Still, in our lifetimes, orthodox macroeconomists have worried about sustained trade deficits.

    “We can run huge deficits for the time being, because foreigners— in particular, foreign governments— are willing to lend us huge sums. But one of these days the easy credit will come to an end, and the United States will have to start paying its way in the world economy.”

    Paul Krugman (2005)

    Orthodoxy changes very lowly, but it has changed regarding trade deficits in the last 30-40 years.

    For better or worse? Not sure…..

  44. Gravatar of ChacoKevy ChacoKevy
    1. December 2016 at 20:39

    @Student It was wild today, wasn’t it. The only thing missing was a flight suit and a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

  45. Gravatar of Matthew Waters Matthew Waters
    1. December 2016 at 21:00

    “There is a good reason btw why countries have elites – the elites do things well. And countries with the best elite selection processes, Singapore comes to mind, are also the best governed. Even a place like Russia, of all places, has remarkably stable elites. The US by contrast comes across as panem et circenses with emphasis on circenses.”

    I’m all for defending the vague “elites” against Trumpist arguments, but it’s wrong that a true elite class is necessarily a good thing. Honestly *any* person with too much power will muck things up. I also wouldn’t take much from Singapore or Hong Kong, which are both small relative to how much money flows through their financial sectors.

    And quite honestly, the rhetoric against elites in America and especially Europe has some point. Krugman would call them “Very Serious People” with austerity hurting these voters. But at least monetary policy and/or bank regulation plainly failed.

    Unfortunately the anti-elite arguments take the exact wrong approach. And the anti-elite arguments are often used to indict *any* use of facts, evidence, logic, etc. The lack of facts was quite honestly convenient to believe some messianic message of Trump which will never come true. All the facts pointed to “Hillary has issues and will muck up some things like Obama did, but Trump is far worse,” but Trump’s rhetoric was so appealing that most of his voters didn’t look at the facts.

  46. Gravatar of Scott Sumner Scott Sumner
    1. December 2016 at 21:15

    Thanks Todd, And don’t worry, I’ll have plenty more to say about monetary policy, starting tomorrow.

  47. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    1. December 2016 at 21:37

    There is a good reason btw why countries have elites – the elites do things well.

    No, countries have elites because any political society larger than an agricultural village requires some sort of stratified organizing power. The elites in question may be capable or rotten.

    The political class we had managed in less than 3 years (1945-48) to superintend a comprehensive demobilization while the civilian economy adjusted to the injection of an 8 digit population of returning soldiers into the labor market and factories re-tooled to produce consumer goods and the industrial inputs for producing consumer goods. They even balanced the budget. The elite we have now cannot accomplish 1/10th of that in a 3 year period. The exemplar of the elites of our time is Hunter Biden:

    http://theothermccain.com/2014/10/17/glad-i-wasnt-caught-with-hookers-too-hunter-biden-didnt-say-after-dismissal-from-navy-reserve-for-blow/

  48. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 07:57

    O/T: Erick Erickson seems excited that Mattis appears to be getting the nod for the Secretary of War job in the Trump administration.

    …Trump’s campaign was confirming Trump wants General James “Mad Dog” Mattis to be the Secretary of Defense, which will really be again the War Department under Mattis’s leadership. Mattis is a twenty-first century George S. Patton who is willing to and loves to kill for his country. “I like shooting people,” Mattis once said. He’s a war machine who was pushed out of command by Barack Obama because Mattis was too hostile toward Iran.

    http://theresurgent.com/scoop-jackson-republicans/

  49. Gravatar of Massimo Heitor Massimo Heitor
    2. December 2016 at 08:11

    The federal government quietly pays United Technologies ~$7 _billion_ per year in federal contracts and research grants. This isn’t new at all, nothing to do with Trump, zero outrage, no comments from Sumner about libertarians with their head in the sand.

    Trump comes along and loudly announces he made a deal with Carrier to hang on to some stereotypical rust belt jobs for $7 _million_ tax break from the state of Indiana over ten years. All of a sudden, this is a huge betrayal of economic principle.

  50. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 08:38

    Mark Levin’s initial reaction to Carrier: it was “pure capitalism” at work ?
    http://therightscoop.com/mark-levin-says-trump-pence-deal-carrier-pure-capitalism-work/

    …and then a few hours later (after the meth wore off I guess):
    http://therightscoop.com/mark-levin-rips-trump-carrier-comments-banana-republic/

  51. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 08:53

    My cousin owns a mid sized aerospace business in Los Angeles. He plays this same game: threatens to move to Colorado or some such, until he gets concessions from the city or state.

    Carrier should be a great example for other businesses who now know that Trump is hungry for a photo op. Maybe my cousin can get in on it.

    Meanwhile, instead of an endless stream of whiny justifications, some on the right are consistent at least:
    http://www.redstate.com/patterico/2016/12/01/crony-capitalism-like-trumps-carrier-deal-problem/

  52. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 09:36

    O/T: may be of interest to free speech peeps:
    https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/804740407552778241

  53. Gravatar of Student Student
    2. December 2016 at 09:39

    @Tom,

    +1 on your last comment. On Mattis, I’d mention that every buddy of mine in the military loves the guy. From what i gather they see him as a soldiers leader that leads by example. I can respect that. Not sure about his position on Iran being the #1 issue in the Levant but I actually think he is the best appointment to date. He is a “scholar” general who supposedly knows his stuff. I like people that know what they are talking about… I’d take that any day. He also seems to be less self interested than some of the other clowns trump has put forward (not sure about Romney but he seems reasonable what little I actually know about his foreign policy views, but I can live with him too). People willing to put their selves last and others first are ok in my book.

    @Chaco,

    It was wild. Not sure I’d compare it to Mr Flight suit… IMO it was way worse. It was some weird mix of rambling incoherence mixed with narcicism. Drumpf is in his own unclassifiable league of incompetence mixed with narcicism. I don’t even have words to describe what he is like. These next four years are going to be quite a ride. Buckle up, and for the first time ever, I wish I had a bunker to hide in. But I’d stock it with jerky, lots of jerky.

  54. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    2. December 2016 at 10:09

    @Student: the hope is that Trump gets tired of the hassles and attacks of being president and quite after a couple of years. He can always come up with some ego-saving reason. You know at some point he will be thinking “I don’t need this shit”. Pence is no picnic but at least he’s normal.

  55. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    2. December 2016 at 11:29

    “but at least he’s normal.”

    -So is ISIS. So what?

  56. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 11:46

    @msgkings maybe someone can start a Miss Megaverse pageant… something way more important than being POTUS. Something more befitting of Trump’s splendiferous grandeur.

  57. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 14:56

    O/T: Ann Coulter disillusioned so soon?
    https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/804794257961865220

  58. Gravatar of Thiago Ribeiro Thiago Ribeiro
    2. December 2016 at 15:18

    I don’t think it is the Supreme Court’s duty to protect flag burners from legislation leglly approved by the Congress and backed by the president.

  59. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 16:14

    Damn, even Palin is dumping on him:
    http://therightscoop.com/wow-sarah-palin-just-called-trumps-carrier-deal-crony-capitalism/

  60. Gravatar of Matthew Waters Matthew Waters
    2. December 2016 at 16:46

    “I don’t think it is the Supreme Court’s duty to protect flag burners from legislation leglly approved by the Congress and backed by the president.”

    Yes, it is the duty of the Supreme Court to overturn legislation which is not constitutional. The Supreme Court is ultimately the only check against the tyranny of the majority.

  61. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    2. December 2016 at 17:53

    @Matthew: ignore Thiago, he’s a Brazilian who comments every day on various blogs but knows very little about the US.

  62. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    2. December 2016 at 20:22

    @Student,

    Erickson & his colleague Steven Berman at TheResurgent seem smitten with Mattis. I don’t know much about him, but was curious about how the “Trump won’t get us into wars” crowd would react to Erickson’s description above.

    Later I came across a self described “conservative case against Mattis” written by streiff at Erickson’s old website RedState.com:
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/12/02/mattis/

  63. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    2. December 2016 at 22:03


    and people of the same family directly hiring the other?

    You still need to ask Hillary about that. Or JFK for that matter. I for myself don’t really care to be honest. As I said: It should be up to the President to decide which people can help him best in doing his job. And then after two years the voters can judge his work, like they did
    in the 1994 midterm elections for example.

    Maybe you want to broaden your horizon about what happened back then since you apparently don’t seem to know it all. I give you a little hint: A certain guy hired his wife to chair a “task force” to make a health care bill for him. A wife that was never elected to anything at this point. And that wasn’t the first (and not the last) time he did this. They played this game for decades, you ignorant fool.


    You just lash out and pepper it all over with boilerplate “the arrogance of the elites…” kind of blah….

    You and your stupid straw men. Nowhere in this thread did I talk about elites. I only talked about your ignorance and arrogance. And that’s just another example of it. You are just making up straw men and then you argue against your very own straw men. That’s just sad.


    Singapore comes to mind, are also the best governed. Even a place like Russia, of all places, has remarkably stable elites. The US by contrast comes across as panem et circenses with emphasis on circenses.

    Now you are praising extremely authoritarian regimes and their elites while at the same time you are totally bashing the elites of the most stable, most liberal and freest democracy on earth. Compare this to your straw men in which you implied that I was the one bashing American elites. You must be out of your mind.

    I have to say this one of the worst posts I’ve read by you ever. I hope you can do better next time. It should be rather easy because you’ve set the bar so very low this time, even by your standards.

  64. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    2. December 2016 at 22:14

    @Tom Brown

    The funny thing about you is that you seem to be very liberal, very left-wing guy (nothing wrong about that) but nevertheless you seem to be reading an awful lot of very right-wing media. I mean just look at this thread, you bring up one boring and irrelevant right-wing article and comment after another. You really seem to be one of their very best clients and promoters. Oh the irony.

  65. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    3. December 2016 at 13:21

    @Christian, I mostly read political views I disagree with. What’s the point of being in a choir preached to?

  66. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    3. December 2016 at 13:25

    Sumner wrote:

    “Everyone, LOL at all the libertarians who drank the kool-aid and now have their heads in the sand.”

    Comments like this only reinforce what everyone already knows when Sumner calls himself a “libertarian.”

    This condescension and laughter reveals a self-separation and distancing.

  67. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. December 2016 at 09:51

    Massimo, You said:

    “The federal government quietly pays United Technologies ~$7 _billion_ per year in federal contracts and research grants. This isn’t new at all, nothing to do with Trump, zero outrage, no comments from Sumner about libertarians with their head in the sand.”

    Congratulations for earning the “most moronic comment of the day” award. I’ve objected to excessively military spending dozens and dozens of times in this blog.

    Tom, Trump doing crony capitalism? Like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin I’m SHOCKED.

  68. Gravatar of Larry Larry
    4. December 2016 at 11:11

    Everything Trump says is just red meat. Many of his early actions (Carrier) will be the same – designed to reassure his base that he is in fact “on their side”. Watch for the things he does that he doesn’t much talk about. That’s how to learn where we’re going, if in fact he has any other plan than to stay in front of the parade.

  69. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. December 2016 at 13:47

    @Tom Brown
    That’s actually a very good answer. You read them to broaden your horizon, to learn something new. I do this, too. I read nearly only media outlets, I oftentimes disagree with: WaPo, NYT, and so on.

    But I got a problem here: I don’t believe you. And why do I not believe you? Because you don’t read quality, you read trash. You read sites like Red State because they say what you want to hear (which is Trump bashing) and you read guys like Coulter not to get new views and broaden your horizon but to make fun of them. So, no I don’t believe your rather good answer. You don’t want to hear something new, you just want to confirm what you already believe, and you do that by picking the most trashy right-wing sites on the Internet.

Leave a Reply