As Michael Brown wrote here last week, Washington florist Barronelle Stutzman faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and court costs that could wipe out not just her livelihood but her retirement fund and leave her homeless — all for the “crime” of not taking part in a same-sex wedding that violated her religious beliefs. And my reaction is: “Get on with it, already! Show the courage of your convictions and just ban Christianity outright.”
I’m getting really sick of this death by a thousand cuts. The elites who dominate our society and run the U.S. government via the courts clearly do not want to tolerate Christianity. Since they don’t have the votes to amend the Constitution and outlaw the practice of that faith entirely, instead they pack the bench with leftist sophists who twist our Constitution like saltwater taffy — amending it via judicial diktat dozens of times a year (if you count lower courts as well as SCOTUS), enshrining leftist secularism beyond the reach of shuffling, deplorable voters.
Oh, they’ll make room for progressive Christians that mutate the Faith, discard whatever secularists tell them is out of fashion, and “discover” that Jesus really meant to say precisely what the world wants to hear at this very moment. (Funny coincidence, that.)
Worship Caesar
What the Ivy League, the federal bureaucracy, the media, and the courts who do their bidding will not endure is genuine Christianity, the historic faith in any form that would have been recognizable, say, in 1963, on the day C.S. Lewis died. It’s precisely that “mere Christianity” Lewis explained which Baronelle Stutzman faces ruination for practicing. It’s the same creed which the Obama administration tried to snuff out among the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Here are two Christian principles that simply will not be tolerated:
Marriage is between one man and one woman.
Killing the innocent is wrong and must be punished.
I know, I know: What’s with all the esoteric theology, John? Do you really have to try to impose things that only Roman Catholics believe, because the Blessed Virgin Mary told them to peasant kids in some apparition? Can’t you stick to something … basic, which people could know is true just by thinking about it clearly? How about something that most people in most societies, even without the Gospel, knew was true?
Okay, kidding. These aren’t Catholic-specific. The two claims above are not exclusively Christian, or Jewish. You don’t even need to be a monotheist to see these things, since the Zeus-worshipping Greeks saw them too. But they are truths which the Christian faith accepted and built on, and which it can’t live without — any more than advanced physics could survive if you outlawed simple arithmetic.
If Baronelle Stutzmann or the Little Sisters of the Poor cannot assert these truths, and act on them — by refusing to take part in fake marriages or chemical abortions — then Christianity is in effect illegal. You know, the way it was in the Roman Empire, when Christians were ordered on pain of death to worship the emperor. The parallel is exact. No one claims that Ms. Stutzmann or the Little Sisters were running around disrupting same sex marriages, or stealing people’s abortion pills. No, they faced government persecution for not taking positive action to do what they know to be evil. They wouldn’t burn incense in front of Diocletian. They wouldn’t recite the Shehada when ISIS told them to.
Enough Half-Measures Already
So I wish that our masters would just admit what they’re really up to and try to enact a Christian ban. All they would need to do is create a case that makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which gives the judges the pretext to exempt Christianity from the First Amendment’s protections. I am sure that the legal brains at the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center could find the right test case, and aim it at the creative jurists of the Ninth Circuit Court — confident that the same five-vote majority that issued Obergefell v. Hodges would vote their way. In fact, they really ought to, if they want to honor that precedent, as well as that shining lodestar of American moral thinking, Casey v. Planned Parenthood.
Perhaps the case could center on Christian parents who wish to home-school a child, or a Christian college that doesn’t want to hire openly homosexual faculty, or a doctor who won’t perform abortions. I leave the specifics to our betters. I know that they’re up to the task.
I have faith that Ruth Bader Ginbsurg and Anthony Kennedy can come up with some narrative that proves that the Founding Fathers really meant to ban orthodox Christianity, while protecting other creeds. Those justices could “prove” to their own satisfaction that the whole Bill of Rights is really a recipe for chicken mole. And the rest of our elites (including too many Republicans) would back them up, and call that decision “settled law.”
Decades of training and practice of modern legal theory have trained these experts to see through the tangle of messy words with specific denotations and plausible connotations, and ignore the grubby historical context and plain intentions of the Founders — and hear the clear, pure voice of our “living Constitution.” That god, whom Caesar demands that we worship, will never fail. It can be trusted. It will always tell the world just what the flesh and the devil would like us to hear. (For more from the author of “Why Don’t Secularists Just Be Honest and Outlaw Christianity?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/512px-Anti-Christian_sign_in_Federal_Plaza_Chicago.jpg767512Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-19 23:35:302017-02-19 23:35:30Why Don’t Secularists Just Be Honest and Outlaw Christianity?
The more you see something shocking, the less shocking it appears, and the more something outrageous happens, the less outrageous it seems to be. That is how a culture becomes desensitized, and that is how the abnormal becomes normalized. But when it comes to the government’s attack on our religious freedoms, it is our sacred duty to remain shocked and outraged. Such things cannot continue to happen in America if we are to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
According to the Washington Supreme Court, when Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman declined to do the floral arrangements for a same-sex “wedding,” she violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws, since she allegedly discriminated based on her customer’s sexual orientation by refusing to participate in his “wedding ceremony.”
Attorney David French is correct in emphasizing how this ruling should affect us (he penned these words shortly after the verdict was announced): “If you care about the Bill of Rights, the rights of conscience, or even the English language, there’s a chance that this morning you felt a disturbance in the Force — as if the Founders cried out in rage and were suddenly silenced.”
As French clearly explains,
She was not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. She was making a decision not to help celebrate an action, a form of expression. She would no more celebrate a gay wedding than she would any form of immorality, gay or straight. To dispense with her argument, the court did what numerous progressive courts have done: It rewrote the law. It rejected what it called the “status/conduct” distinction, and essentially interpreted the word “orientation” to also mean “action.”
In a million lifetimes, the Founders could never have countenanced such an outrage. In fact, I doubt that the leading pioneer gay activists could have countenanced something this extreme when they launched their movement less than 50 years ago.
It is imperative, then, that we not lose our sense of shock and outrage just because things like this are becoming increasingly common. For the sake of our kids and our grandkids — not to mention for the sake of our contemporaries — we cannot become desensitized.
What the court has said in Washington echoes what other courts have said around the country: Regardless of your religious or moral convictions, you must participate in gay “weddings” if your business provides any service related to such events. Otherwise, you are guilty of discrimination. (This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other examples of the government or corporations or schools punishing Christians for their faith.)
What this means is that a gay couple could go into a bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who primarily live and do business among themselves, that couple could ask the devout Jewish baker to bake a cake for their “wedding,” and that baker could be put of business if he refused to comply. (Stop for a moment and try to imagine this scenario in your mind. It really is unthinkable.)
Or that same gay couple could go into a bakery in the most religious part of Dearborn, Michigan, home to tens of thousands of Muslims, some of them very religious, and a Muslim baker could be put of business for declining to participate in their “wedding.” How could this be?
Are religious Jewish photographers required to shoot Christian weddings under penalty of law? Of course not.
Are devout Muslim photographers required to shoot Hindu weddings under penalty of law? Obviously not.
Why then are Christian bakers and florists and photographers required to provide their services for gay weddings under penalty of law?
To say it again: This is an absolute outrage, and to shrug our shoulders with indifference is to insult Jesus, to insult our Founders and to insult our brothers and sisters in the faith.
What if a Christian woman went into the store of an Orthodox Jewish woodworker, asking that craftsman to make a crucifix for her to wear around her neck, then taking him to court when he explained that, as a religious Jew, he could not take her order, since that would be sacrilegious for him. Would the courts really rule for the Christian woman and claim that the Orthodox Jewish craftsman was guilty of discrimination based on religion? To do so would send shockwaves through the Jewish community nationwide, and rightly so.
What if this same Christian woman went into the store of a religious Muslim printer, asking him to print flyers declaring, “The Koran is wrong. Jesus really is the Son of God”?
When she took him to court for declining her business, would the courts really rule on her behalf and claim that the religious Muslim printer was guilty of discrimination based on religion? To do so would send shockwaves through the Muslim community nationwide, and rightly so.
The Washington ruling is no less outrageous and should send shockwaves through the Christian community nationwide.
What the courts have effectively done is to elevate sexual orientation to the most privileged status — trumping freedoms of speech and religion and conscience — and to rule that, businesses must not only serve gays and lesbians but also must participate in their lifestyle celebrations, with severe penalties for failure to comply.
Remarkably, when a gay baker declined to make a cake with a biblical verse against homosexuality and the case was taken to court, the court ruled in favor of the baker and against the Christian. How can this possibly be?
I wrote on Thursday that Christian leaders must not be silent about the Washington ruling, calling for specific points of action.
Today, I’m saying something even more basic: If you are a person of faith and conscience, you must not lose your outrage. (For more from the author of “It Is Outrageous for the Government to Force Christians to Violate Their Faith” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/FlowerShop_ShangHaiStreet_HK.jpg13111500Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-19 23:30:162017-02-19 23:30:16It Is Outrageous for the Government to Force Christians to Violate Their Faith
When I learned that President Trump had apparently changed his mind on protecting religious business owners and schools from government harassment and legal persecution, I’ll admit that I was angry. As Maggie Gallagher explained, with a stroke of his pen, Trump could reverse executive orders and policies made by Barack Obama, who knew that there weren’t the votes in Congress to add “sexual orientation” or “gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
So Obama declared that the federal government would henceforth play make believe, and act as if religious objections to homosexuality, and rational insistence that there are just two human sexes, were covered in the original law. (Which was passed back when sodomy was still in crime in most of those legislators’ states, when what happens in “sex change” operations was still called “castration.”) I guess Obama had seen the Supreme Court cram contemporary mores between the lines of the Constitution often enough, that he wanted to get in on the act when it came to federal law. This legal hijacking law is so blatant, you almost have to admire Obama’s chutzpah. It’s as if he dressed up Rev. Martin Luther King in drag like Tyler Perry, and got away with it.
Rumors suggest that it was Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son in law Jared Kushner who convinced him to go back on his promise to conservative Christians. I wondered why orthodox Jews would favor distortions of the law that could harm their co-religionists — who also follow the Hebrew Bible on this point. Then I remembered all those Biden-sniffing Jesuits at Georgetown, and felt a sickly kind of peace. “Everyone is insane,” I reflected.
Was Ivanka worried about all the “fabulous”parties she would be disinvited from back in Manhattan, if her father stuck up for Christians? She needn’t worry. Those hostesses are already furious at her, afraid that her father will deport their illegal nannies. What the Trumps need to realize is that they will be treated as pariahs for simple, sane policies like enforcing our country’s borders and laws. They might as well go ahead and protect religious freedom too.
Let me try to break it down another way.
Dear Mr. President:
Evangelical Christians, the people whom you promised to look out for until you were talked you out of it, make up 20 percent of voters, and 50 percent of voters in Republican primaries. In November, 80 percent of them voted for you.
Coming from New York City, you might not realize this, but gays make up a whole 2 percent of the electorate. For all you did to win them over, with Peter Thiel’s speech at the Convention and your waving the rainbow flag, what percentage of that 2 percent do you think voted for you — or would vote for you in four years in the blue states where most of them live? Sure they have a lot of money. Do you think they were contributing it to you?
Now maybe you’re worried not about gay voters per se, but straight voters who watched Will & Grace for long enough that now they have pro-gay attitudes. There are a lot of people like that, especially women. How many of them do you think want to persecute Christian florists and bakers, close down wedding chapels and Catholic schools? Not many. You could sell that pro-religious freedom executive order as standing up for the little guy against tort-hungry lawyers using big government to persecute religious Americans — because that is, in fact, exactly what it is.
But these are heady arguments. So let me reach for the heartstrings. I will pull out the big guns here, and explain why you should sign the executive order protecting religious Americans using a Frank Sinatra song:
Trump, be a leader and fight,
Trump, be a leader and fight.
Trump if you’ve ever been a leader to begin with
Trump, be a leader and fight!
Trump let Christians see
What a straight shooter you can be.
I know how you treated your creditors in the 80s.
Trump shoot straight with me.
A leader never scams his voters.
It isn’t fair, it isn’t nice.
A leader doesn’t fawn on the snowflakes and snobs.
Or blow on his enemies’ dice.
Let’s keep the Party far-right,
And ruin Meryl Streep’s night.
Stick with the Deplorables who put you in the White House
Trump be a leader, and fight!
Sincerely,
The Christian Voters of America Who Nominated & Elected You
(For more from the author of “President Trump: Be a Leader and Fight (for Religious Freedom)” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Donald_Trump_haircut_Laconia_by_Michael_Vadon_July_16_2015_cropped.jpg21112228Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-17 23:27:012017-02-17 23:33:31President Trump: Be a Leader and Fight (for Religious Freedom)
Over the past two weeks, we’ve gotten a taste of the social transformation without representation that is confronting us at every turn. Conservatives can fight to win a bitter election — resulting in control all three branches of the federal government and an overwhelming footprint in state governments — yet it is meaningless.
The unelected bureaucrats are continuing to promote Obama’s policies, and the unelected courts are destroying our Constitution beyond what previous generations of Americans could have ever feared in their worst nightmares. Blue states are allowed to violate the Constitution with impunity while red states have been denuded of their right to self-govern in accordance with the Constitution and federal law.
The courts are ravaging this country and contorting the very foundation of its existence as a sovereign and free nation. The Bastards on the BenchTM are bastardizing the First and 14th Amendments to mean the exact opposite of their intent.
Sharia-adherent Islamists in Somalia and Iraq have been granted an affirmative religious liberty right to immigrate, yet Americans have no right to run their own business and property in accordance with their Christian or Jewish beliefs, deeply rooted in our founding.
Our founding monuments are uprooted by the courts under the guise of not establishing a state religion, yet the courts are coercing individuals to service the sexual identity movement against their conscience — the very essence of what the Establishment Clause sought to prevent.
Red states are being prevented from protecting their sovereignty from illegal immigration, their franchise from the disenfranchising corruption of voter fraud — all under the corrupted misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment — yet blue states are allowed to violate the property, religious, and civil rights of business owners by forcing them to engage in involuntary servitude for something that even Obama opposed until the end of his first term as president.
The case with Baronelle Stutzman in Washington is the one legitimate manifestation of a violation to both the 14th and First Amendments (the entire preamble of the Declaration), yet this is one state injustice the federal government allows to stand.
Blue states are allowed to nullify federal immigration law, harbor illegal aliens, and demand Sharia refugees, yet Arizona is forced to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens amnestied by someone who is no longer president.
The cultural Marxists have successfully launched a decapitation strike against our founding. Our rights no longer come from God; they come from the courts. State and federal respective powers no longer stem from the Constitution; they stem from the courts. Hence, the courts are able to turn those rights and powers diametrically opposed to their self-evident truths. We are caught between the rock and hard place of the Rainbow Jihad and the Islamic jihad.
The cultural Marxists don’t merely win political battles; they enshrine their ethos into the most immutable constitutional rights of our nation so that they no longer need to win politically to succeed. Their agenda lives on past their electoral losses.
And what about those political victories? We have a Republican Party that is every bit as socially liberal as Democrats. Yet they run as social conservatives so that they cannot be replaced during primaries, thereby serving as offensive linemen who transform into defensive lineman to thwart every play we make or block us from making the tackle against the plays of the Left.
Thanks to their utter insouciance to the cultural Marxist onslaught, the Left is able to win 50 years’ worth of culture battles overnight without firing a shot. And there is no outrage our counter movement. The social conservative political establishment is dead.
Yet we are not even asking for a socially conservative agenda; merely a socially libertarian agenda, one that does not downright criminalize religion, abrogate property rights, and banish our heritage from the public and even private square. Every Republican with a lever of power is to the left of where Democrats were on these issues before Obama took office.
During the ‘90s — and even during the Bush years — Republicans successfully passed (with overwhelming bipartisan support) immigration enforcement statutes with provisions stripping the courts of jurisdiction. Now, even conservatives won’t raise a red flag as the courts violate those very statutes.
When the courts assaulted life, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Ten Commandments, the House held hearings on judicial reform and passed bills kicking the courts out of those issues (failed in the Senate). Yet the entire GOP establishment — and indeed almost the entire conservative movement — has stood idly by while the courts have redefined marriage, criminalized our founding religious values, and erased our national sovereignty.
And it’s not like Republicans are any more conservative on fiscal issues either. Obamacare has destroyed the job market, nationalized one-sixth of our economy in the worst mix of venture socialism and a zombie “private” sector, and has ensured that no choice, competition, and innovation could ever emerge in the most important part of our economy — all leaving American families unable to afford basic needs without unsustainable government subsidies. Yet, not a single powerful Republican can even articulate a vision for free markets and repeal this corrupt program, except for Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and a handful of Freedom Caucus House members. Indeed, economic Marxism is the logical outcome of a party and a “movement” that is now at peace with cultural Marxism.
We keep waiting for the inflection point to come — when our time will come to take back our government. Many voters thought the election of President Trump was that moment. But if conservatives don’t begin to break out of the existing paradigm, look beyond the stale and failed institutions on the Right, and think beyond the existing intellectual ghetto of Republican politicos, we will continue the social and fiscal death spiral to the pits of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Sure, this sounds very gloomy, but I did not dedicate my life to fighting for our values so that we can despair, rather so we can find solutions. And the first step to finding a solution is being brutally honest about the severity of the problem.
All is not lost just because of a rough first month. But to succeed over the next four years and beyond, we need to build a new movement dedicated to confronting today’s challenges not just in theory, but in practice. We need a conservative media that is not just “anti-liberal media” and ironically follows the lead of their daily narratives (all Russia all the time) while Rome burns.
We need to chart a new path by harnessing timeless values and putting them into practice. We need to be prepared for these inflection moments and leverage points to strike with full force for our just values the same way the Left never lets a genuine crisis go to waste in pursuit of their immoral, illogical, and unlawful agenda. We need to get donors to stop funding failed causes that at best waste money and at worst undermine their stated causes, particularly on civilization issues. We need to build the case for long-term systemic reforms to the entire practice of our prevailing (unlawful) system of governance, and we must champion the Convention of the States to create momentum outside of Washington for change within the capitol.
Every generation has its challenges and is called upon to fight for what is just. Ours is unique in that the challenges strike to the core of the most self-evident truths of nature and the most basic common sense values of men and nations. Whether we succeed or not is up to us and our faith in God. But one thing is certain: If we fail to break out of the existing paradigm and look beyond the R vs. D binary race to the bottom or the lesser of two evil ideas, strategies, and leaders, we will never even rise to the challenge much less overcome it. (For more from the author of “This Is the Cultural Marxist Hellhole Our Country Has Become. What Now?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/american-flag-1448031957k8m.jpg324615Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-17 21:08:322017-02-17 21:08:32This Is the Cultural Marxist Hellhole Our Country Has Become. What Now?
When the main stream media rely on anonymous sources, friendly relationships with current and former government officials, and recycling previously reported stories to promote an agenda, readers are right to suspect a set up.
We expect less from outlets like the Gateway Pundit, who rely on hyper-sensationalized headlines and slanted, even made-up, stories to generate clicks to their websites. The public demands, and serious consumers of news expect, a higher standard from established newspapers and cable news operations.
Instead, we get stories that are so selective, and so coordinated, as to constitute a subtler form of fake news. At the moment, the media have latched on to anything remotely related to Russia to tarnish the Trump administration, especially in the wake of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Adviser.
The flood of weakly-related and even unsupported Russia stories smacks of a partisan effort to destroy the Trump administration, not an objective search for truth.
For example, CNN is still recycling reports about the evidence-starved Russian “dossier” that had been examined by the intelligence community and the press for months before Buzzfeed dumped them on its website in early January. The New York Times and CNN took Buzzfeed to task for publishing the unverified reports; but they are still being cited.
Another example is this breathless reporting of Russian cruise missiles.
The New York Times and Washington Post, along with CNN have all written similar stories about the Russian deployment of the ground-launched cruise missile known as the SSC-8, which is a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The INF treaty was signed in 1987 by President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev of the former USSR. It bans ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 300 and 3400 miles.
The Russians first tested the SSC-8 in 2008. President Obama’s administration declared Russia in violation of the INF treaty in 2014. Do you have any memory of that? Probably not. But suddenly, this is a front-burner issue, because it provides yet another chance to connect Russia with Donald Trump.
A third example is the Russian spy ship sighted off the U.S. eastern seaboard. How is this news? The Russians have for years deployed spy ships to America’s Atlantic coast and the Caribbean. It’s only top news because … well, you know why.
In reality, there is no “crisis” with Russia that didn’t exist before the Trump administration. There are no “new” facts relating to U.S.-Russian relations since Trump took office.
Flynn’s downfall was hurried along by leaks of highly classified information within the Trump administration of telephone intercept transcripts of a call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador. Yes, the call took place, but it now appears the details discussed on the call were innocuous. But again, the use of anonymous sources, who may have an axe to grind with Trump, and the selective reporting of details, is at best editorializing, not fair reporting.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that there’s evidence of a pattern in the media reports:
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday that he saw the leaks about Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. “There does appear to be a well orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration,” he said. “From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern.”
This confluence of government leaks, anonymous sources, hyper-sensational headlines, and unsupported stories does nothing to contradict Trump’s accusations that the media is engaged in reporting “fake news.” If the media don’t want the Trump administration to treat them as the opposition, then they need to quit playing the role of opposition so blatantly. (For more from the author of “The Mainstream Media Treatment of Trump and Russia Smacks of Fake News” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Note-Study-People-Memo-Hand-Writing-Author-Pen-325321.jpg640960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-16 20:32:572017-02-16 20:32:57The Mainstream Media Treatment of Trump and Russia Smacks of Fake News
Washington is abuzz with the saga of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation, the Russia connection, and the melodrama of who knew what, when and what they did about it.
There are, to be sure, myriad aspects of this story that will consume the media, the Hill, civil society and the like for a while.
We want to highlight one — and only one — serious aspect of this story that has been underreported: the unauthorized (and criminal) leaks of highly classified information to the media by a person or persons in the government.
We will not weigh in on the panoply of issues related but not limited to the role of the White House counsel and his discussions with then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the communications that Trump campaign operatives may have had with Russians before the election, or the proper role of Congress or the press going forward.
It goes without saying that Flynn had a duty to be honest with Vice President Mike Pence about what he discussed with the Russian ambassador, and whether the issue of U.S. sanctions against Russia was any part of those conversations.
Regardless of whether you think President Donald Trump should have asked for Flynn’s resignation, the president had the right to ask him to resign. But not telling the truth to the vice president is not a crime under these circumstances.
Flynn had a legal duty to tell the truth to FBI agents, who apparently questioned him about the calls. Failure to tell the truth to the FBI could have negative legal consequences for Flynn, depending on what he said and the exact questions asked.
With respect to the leaks, what we have so far are allegations from anonymous government sources about what was supposedly said in the conversation between Flynn and the Russian ambassador. The transcript is not public yet, so we don’t really know the content, context or circumstances of the conversations.
Perhaps these sources who refuse to go on the record are being 100 percent accurate about what was said — but without the actual transcript, we don’t really know.
Just as we assume that foreign governments, even allies, monitor the calls of U.S. ambassadors (and other U.S. personnel) stationed overseas, ambassadors (and other embassy personnel) from other countries stationed in Washington, D.C., have good reason to believe that the U.S. monitors the communications of foreign embassies and consulates.
It is one thing to assume it is happening, but not know for sure. It is entirely another thing to illegally disclose the fact that we have been recording the calls of the Russian ambassador and other top Russian personnel.
Now they know.
Exposing US Secrets for Political Purposes
Alerting the Russians about our lawful surveillance of them — during an ongoing investigation — for the purpose of knee-capping Flynn is inexcusable. As New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning author Charlie Savage wrote in his book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post 9/11 Presidency, “There have always been unauthorized disclosures of information to the news media. It’s how Washington works and has always worked.”
But compared to the nine major leak cases highlighted in Savage’s book (Leibowitz, Drake, Manning, Kim, Sterling, Kiriakou, Snowden, Sachtleben and Petraeus), where none of the leakers disclosed classified information for the purpose of targeting one senior government official, these leaks were designed to do exactly that.
Savage opposes the criminalization of unauthorized disclosures because they are a “counterforce against overclassification.” But he also admits that “there can be bad leaks, the disclosure of information whose publication impose social costs that outweigh its social benefits.”
Ask yourself this: Was it better to keep the Russians guessing about what we had on them during the government’s investigation, or was it more important to let them know what we were doing, and how we were doing it, in order to embarrass Flynn?
What we can say with some confidence is that the motivations behind these leaks seem to be purely political and were specifically aimed at bringing down Flynn.
In doing so, the leakers were willing to compromise the national security of the nation by telling the media that we were successfully listening to the phone calls of the Russian ambassador to the United States, and other Russians, in connection with Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
Could Flynn Be Prosecuted?
Some have suggested Flynn may have violated the Logan Act — the 1799 act that was designed to prevent private citizens from specifically engaging in “any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government … in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.”
No one has ever been prosecuted under that act (18 U.S.C. §953), which has been roundly (and rightly) criticized by distinguished legal scholars from the left and the right as a content-based restriction on First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Keep in mind that this law was passed just a year after the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The Sedition Act of 1798 is probably one of the worst violations of the First Amendment ever passed by Congress. The Logan Act follows pretty closely behind the Sedition Act in its basic abrogation of First Amendment rights and has never been used against the many Americans who may have technically violated it.
A 2015 Congressional Research Service report details the problems with the act, although it neglects to mention the specific intent requirement in its analysis.
Again, we don’t really know what Flynn said to the Russians as a private citizen, but whatever it was — regardless of whether one thinks it was prudent to do so or not — there is almost zero probability of a successful prosecution under the Logan Act, given its constitutional infirmities.
As Susan Hennessey and Helen Murillo detail in a blog post on lawfareblog.com, the administration has a host of criminal statutes to use against the leakers, including the Espionage Act of 1917, codified at 18 U.S. C. § 793, which prohibits the improper accessing, handling or transmitting of “information respecting the national defense” with the intent of injuring the United States or aiding a foreign nation.
Another related statute, 18 U.S.C. § 798, prohibits the disclosure of classified information, including information “concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government.”
As Hennessey and Murillo also note, government employees in sensitive posts are required to sign nondisclosure agreements, a violation of which can expose the leakers to legal action.
No doubt, there are various aspects of this saga that can and will be investigated by the media and the Congress. But the deliberate, orchestrated and criminal leaks in this case must be investigated. And the leakers must be held to account. (For more from the author of “The Real Crime in the Michael Flynn Saga” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/30020745053_a7df97d691_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-16 20:28:402017-02-16 20:28:40The Real Crime in the Michael Flynn Saga
President Donald Trump’s first weeks as commander in chief have been challenged by upheaval within his National Security Council, the White House group tasked with coordinating and implementing foreign policy and counterterrorism strategy.
The resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser—head of the National Security Council—comes at a time when acute foreign policy decisions await the new administration.
As Trump seeks to recover, former NSC officials say it’s important that the White House quickly establish a functional council that can spearhead the president’s agenda.
“We have never seen anything like this,” said Kenneth Pollack, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution who has served twice on the NSC staff.
“We certainly have seen national security advisers leave basically after the first year of an administration, but never after less than a month,” Pollack said in an interview with The Daily Signal, adding:
Flynn was the one guy on foreign affairs who has been joined at the hip with Trump from the beginning. Now he’s out. No one knows what comes next. To get the policy, you have to get the person in place. Until that happens, the rest of the world to a certain extent has to wait.
Flynn’s tenure lasted only 24 days before the retired Army lieutenant general resigned after admitting he had misled the vice president and other White House officials about the contents of a phone call with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
Pollack said new administrations sometimes experience early “stumbles” in trying to define and organize their National Security Council, an entity made up mostly of career civil servants representing different government agencies.
The NSC, originally created in 1947, has quadrupled in size over the past two decades, and doubled under President Barack Obama.
Obama replaced his first national security adviser, James Jones, after concluding the retired Marine general was a bad match to lead the NSC in the direction the president wanted to take it.
“The NSC is the president’s personal staff on foreign policy,” Pollack told The Daily Signal. “The national security adviser is supposed to be the president’s closest adviser on foreign policy. There needs to be an incredibly tight relationship with the president. The national security adviser need to know what the president wants, how to get things done for him, how to represent his views, and make sure everyone is doing what the president wants.”
“What we’ve consistently seen is the NSC stumbles around for the first months of every administration and eventually figures it out and moves forward,” Pollack added.
‘Destructive,’ but Normal
Flynn’s earliest days were marked with tension, and change.
He sought to reform the council—aiming to cut its size roughly in half from more than 400—and installing staff he knew from his military days and when he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Members of both parties on Capitol Hill have expressed concerns that the NSC got too big under the Bush and Obama administrations, and became overly operational and involved with details meant to be reserved to Cabinet agencies.
In addition, the White House elevated Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief political strategist, to the NSC’s exclusive principals committee, meaning he could attend regular meetings normally consisting of members of the military and intelligence communities.
Some of these changes may have made holdover staff members uncomfortable.
A senior Trump administration official told The Daily Signal that many NSC staff members—career government civil servants—who did not want to work for Trump returned to their regular agencies.
The official said that about 80 percent of an administration’s NSC usually is staffed by career government civil servants — known in government lingo as “detailees.”
The rest are direct hires—political appointees—who usually depart the agency when the administration changes.
About 15 percent of the NSC staff remains unfilled, the official said, adding that he expects the next national security adviser to maintain Flynn’s goal of staffing the council with a head count somewhere in the 200s.
None of Flynn’s direct hires have left the NSC yet despite his departure, the official said, including K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser.
The official also disputed criticisms that Flynn was leaning on military hands to staff the NSC. He said only one of six deputies chosen by Flynn has a military background—David Cattler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official tapped to oversee regional affairs.
The official, who insisted on anonymity to speak freely, disputed accounts of turmoil:
On the one hand, yes, what happened with Flynn is destructive and it’s never happened before this early in an administration. On the other hand, the NSC is doing what it’s supposed to do, holding committee meetings, preparing for phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders. The NSC is very active, so it’s unfair to say it’s in turmoil, aside from the destructive nature of the leadership change so early.
Containing Leaks
Trump’s first month—and Flynn’s brief tenure—also has been marked by a proliferation of leaks that some Republicans consider to be actions carried out by disgruntled career government employees aiming to undermine a president they don’t like. Democrats see the leaks as acts of public service meant to reveal potentially inappropriate behavior.
Drafts of executive orders, including ones Trump hasn’t issued yet, have circulated around Washington. Transcriptions of Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders have been published in news reports.
And numerous stories about Trump campaign officials’ conversations and potential connections with Russian officials—including a Washington Post story documenting Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador—have been written based on leaks from intelligence and law enforcement sources.
The senior Trump administration official said the White House is unsure of the source of the leaks, and he stressed that it’s not unusual for government bureaucrats left over from the prior administration to publicly disclose displeasure with the new president’s policies and team.
He said the White House has “changed its internal procedures” to prevent leaks, although he would not detail what that means. He insisted the White House would not seek to investigate the sources of leaks, and vowed that Trump would not punish them.
But Trump, speaking Thursday with House Republicans, seemed to contradict that, according to pool reports, telling lawmakers: “We’re going to find the leakers and they’re going to pay a big price.”
He blamed “illegal classified leaking” for Flynn’s downfall.
Legal experts say it would be illegal for the president to target employees who are protected by civil service law, as opposed to political appointees.
And former national security officials say it’s not unusual for presidents to express anger with leakers.
Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than all of his predecessors combined.
“Leaks are a big problem for every administration,” said David Shedd, a Heritage Foundation visiting fellow who held intelligence policy positions at the NSC under President George W. Bush. “There is a particularly strong anti-Trump sentiment in the bureaucracy, so I expect that there is a greater propensity to leak.”
“That said,” added Shedd, also a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama, “leaks generally are intended to generate support or undermine support for policy positions.”
James Jeffrey, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, said the best way to subdue a culture of leaks is for the president to create a disciplined, coherent NSC process that allows for dissenters to express concerns internally, minimizing the incentives for leaks.
Jeffrey said Trump should select an “honest broker” to replace Flynn to lead the NSC, which he said is supposed to be a management center that gathers views from across multiple agencies and then implements the decided policy.
“When you have a functioning NSC where the process is good and all ideas are vetted, even if there’s disagreement on the policy decision, you won’t get leaking,” Jeffrey told The Daily Signal. “Leaking tends to be a cry for help within the bureaucracy.”
‘Imperative’ Mission
Whoever replaces Flynn will have to organize policy in key areas, including developing a response to North Korea’s recent missile launch, implementing a strategy to defeat ISIS, and deciding how to approach the U.S. relationship with Russia.
Flynn had perhaps the strongest views of Trump’s foreign policy team on Russia, viewing that country as a possible partner to fight Islamic terrorism, and experts say it’s especially important to know how the next national security adviser envisions U.S. relations with the longtime adversary.
“There is a case for trying to reorient relations with Russia irrespective of who is national security adviser,” Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, said in an email to The Daily Signal, adding:
Plus, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Trump still favor some kind of rethinking. The question is, how do we do that in substantive terms. This is an example of where the NSC, and the national security adviser, can avoid getting bogged down in detail or micromanagement, encourage creative thinking and constructive, ideology-free debate on big issues of the day.
The task ahead for Trump is formidable — and important.
“Settling the turmoil that currently appears to exist in the NSC is imperative to ensuring national security policy gets on track,” Heritage’s Shedd said. (For more from the author of “After Michael Flynn’s Departure, How Trump Can Stabilize National Security Council, Avoid Leaks” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/32254432500_b210a643fa_b.jpg7751024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-16 16:31:062017-02-17 00:00:11After Michael Flynn’s Departure, How Trump Can Stabilize National Security Council, Avoid Leaks
With Supreme Court decisions erroneously regarded as the supreme law of the land instead of the Constitution, everyone on the Right is clamoring to ensure that Trump makes the best Supreme Court pick(s) possible. But given that well under one percent of all federal civil and criminal cases make it to the Supreme Court, decisions coming out of the 13 federal courts of appeals ostensibly (and again, erroneously) serve as “the law of the land” for many critical social and political issues, as we so painfully witnessed with last week’s “9th Circus” ruling.
That is why it is at least as an important to fill the federal circuits with originalists as it is for the Supreme Court. However, if Trump is going to leave his mark on the judiciary, that would require taking bold measures to overturn established traditions so that each appeals court nominee would be more in the mold of Clarence Thomas than even a Neil Gorsuch, much less a John Roberts or Anthony Kennedy.
Why the U.S. Court of Appeals is so vital
For those paying attention to how a mere district judge in one bad circuit can violate the national sovereignty, you need no tutorial on the importance of the lower courts.
In 2015, 54,244 cases were filed in the 12 regional courts of appeals (not including the specialized appeals court for the Federal Circuit) out of a total of 361,689 that began at the district level. At the same time, only about 80 cases were granted full review by the Supreme Court. In other words, the federal courts of appeals are ostensibly the court of last resort for most federal cases. And given that the Left has successfully redefined the Constitution, almost every political issue has become a federal case.
Even though many of the major cases broadly affecting public policy are granted review by the high court, many languish in the lower courts for years and never make it to the Supreme Court. Moreover, the Supreme Court is clearly influenced by the jurisprudential momentum of the lower courts. Given that most of the circuits are full of post-constitutionalists who make Anthony Kennedy look like James Madison, it creates a peer pressure in the legal community to move away from the Constitution as written.
Remember, gay marriage didn’t happen in a vacuum with the Obergefell case. Almost every district court and all but one of the circuits redefined marriage in one of the most anti-constitutional opinions of all time. We are witnessing a similar trend with lower courts chipping away at the “plenary power doctrine” on immigration in recent years.
Furthermore, justices will rarely take up a case expeditiously when there is no split decision among at least two circuit courts. Given that the lower courts are in such bad shape — with such a dearth of originalists — conservatives can rarely win in even one circuit on such bedrock issues as voter ID, religious conscience, and an array of immigration issues. The lower courts tee up the contours and the dynamics of the cases that reach the high court. Therefore, if we fail to change the personnel and the procedures of the lower courts, another two solid originalists on the Supreme Court (assuming one of the liberals dies or resigns from office) would have only a limited effect.
Keep in mind that most of the major cases of consequence pending before the Supreme Court have been appealed by conservatives because of bad lower court decisions. The tyranny begins and usually ends in the circuits. Given that Republicans have control of the federal government and most state governments, we will only be playing defense in the lower courts because that is where the Left will plant their flag, even more so than during the Obama era.
Where the circuits stand: An anti-constitutional circus
It’s not just the 9th Circus.
You could probably count on your fingers the number of true originalists (à la Clarence Thomas) on the circuit courts. While it’s arduous to game out the “ideology” of each judge and circuit, here is my preliminary attempt at an overview of the circuits.
First, we will begin with this infographic detailing the number of Republican appointees and Democrat appointees by circuit among active judges (not including semi-retired “senior judges”). The graphic also shows the strong influence of Obama’s eight years on the appeals courts and the immediate vacancies that can be filled by Trump.
A few observations stand out.
1. Among active judges, Democrats now have an outright majority on nine of the 13 circuits.
And as we will explain in a moment, the courts are in worse shape than this topline number would suggest because almost every Democrat-appointee is a post-constitutionalist while only half the GOP-appointees are conservatives and only relatively small number are true originalists. Just consider how two GOP-appointed judges were already involved in the immigration ruling, one of the most radical and harmful decisions of all-time.
2. There are 20 vacancies that Trump can and should fill immediately.
But Obama’s presidency was so strategic that it will take a long time to swing back a single circuit. Only 10 of those 20 are Democrat vacancies that would tilt the balance of a seat and most are not in circuits that will fundamentally alter the balance of most three-judge panels.
3. The all-important D.C. Circuit is now 7-4 majority Democrat appointees, with four judges appointed by Obama alone.
The D.C. Circuit is the second most influential court in the land on constitutional issues. Worse, while there are some solid senior judges, Janice Rogers Brown is the only real originalist left among the active judges, with Brett Kavanaugh a mostly reliable conservative. The D.C. Circuit is going to be a dumpster fire for the indefinite future. Moreover, if you drill down into the district level, the District Court for the District of Columbia has an 11-0 Democrat majority among active judges!
By the middle of the year, when all the current vacancies take effect, there will be 90 Democrat appointees, 69 GOP appointees, and 20 vacancies among active seats on the appeals courts. However, the circuit courts are really in much worse shape than even the top line numbers would suggest.
Remember, almost all of the cases in the appeals courts are decided by a randomly selected three-judge panel, which also includes the senior judges (although their caseload is reduced in varying degrees). While it is possible to request a full en banc review of a case by the full circuit, those reviews are relatively rare in most circuits. Due to the clear Democrat majority on nine of the circuits and the lack of originalists on most of those panels, the legal Left is almost always assured a favorable panel for whatever they are looking to do: redefine marriage, infringe upon religious liberty, throw out abortion regulations, block photo ID, etc.
On the other hand, we’d be lucky to find 15 originalists on the appeals courts who are every bit as conservative as the 90 Democrat appointees — and a number of Republican appointees — are liberal.
Now let’s take a look at the four circuits where there is a supposed GOP majority:
7th Circuit
This is the easiest one to game out. The 6-3 GOP majority is extremely deceiving. This circuit is home to the infamous Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee who quite literally believes that the Constitution as adopted is outdated and should be disregarded. He wrote the 7th Circuit’s tyrannical gay marriage opinion, among many other bad decisions.
Only two of the nine active judges can be considered reliable originalists across the board: Michael Kanne and Dianne Sykes. While many conservative legal theorists have respected Frank Easterbrook for many years, he has shown that he doesn’t believe in an individual right to bear arms. The rest of the Republican appointees range from progressive to unreliable. Thus liberals can pretty much rely on a favorable three-judge panel for almost anything they want.
6th Circuit
The 9-5 majority of GOP appointees is very misleading if one thinks this is an originalist-dominated circuit.
First, Judge Helene White, although appointed by Bush, is really a liberal Democrat who was selected by Michigan’s two Democrat senators as part of a deal. Jeffrey Sutton, another W appointee, wrote the court’s opinion upholding Obamacare. Out of the seven remaining GOP appointees, only Alice Batchelder could be counted among the most reliable originalists with a few others leaning conservative, such as Raymond Kethledge. Another conservative, Danny Boggs, just retired, so at best his vacancy will be a wash.
Thus, between the liberal active judges and a number of other liberal senior judges in this circuit, it’s hit or miss for conservatives in terms of getting a reliable three-judge panel. In fact, the far Left recently got a three-judge panel to say that transgenderism is settled law and helped promote Jill Stein’s crazy recount in Michigan!
5th and 8th Circuits
The only two circuits that could remotely be considered conservative are the 5th and 8th circuits. However, even the fifth is not as good as its numbers would suggest. The panel certainly has its share of solid judges, with Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, Jennifer Elrod, and Jerry Smith. But last year, conservatives couldn’t even get voter ID past the full panel because a few GOP appointees joined with the Left.
The 8th Circuit is probably the best panel in the country. However, that makes the three vacancies on the court somewhat moot because they’d be better served on other courts.
The balance of power will not shift very soon
As you can see, although there is much hype surrounding the more than 100 vacancies on the court, they will not swing the balance in terms of the circuits. Only 20 of the vacancies are on appeals courts, of which only 10 are Democrat seats, and many of them are on circuits that are irremediably broken or on the 8th Circuit, which is already good.
Moreover, the prognosis for the future is grim. Many Democrat judges will view Trump as anathema that they will not retire under his watch. A quick glance at the vacancy list shows that all five of the circuit court judges who retired since Trump won the election were Republican, as were most of the district court retirees. Thus the trend is not indicative of a host of opportunities to flip the balance of the circuits. Which is one more reason why we need wholesale judicial reform in addition to filling vacancies.
Trump must act soon to fill vacancies and demand originalists in the mold of Thomas
Nonetheless, it is important that Trump not wait the traditional six months or so to start the process of filling lower court vacancies. While I don’t believe it will fundamentally alter the balance of the courts, the better judges who are in the circuits make it more likely we will get lucky and have a decent three-judge panel for random, important cases.
However, if Trump is to make his appointments meaningful, he would have to depart from longstanding tradition that gives home state senators major input on nominees and allows them to potentially scuttle the nomination.
One of the reasons why we have many liberal judges from Republican presidents — such as Judge Robart, a W appointee — is because Democrat senators can “blue slip” any nominee from their state they dislike. Under Senate tradition, the Judiciary Committee will refuse to hold a hearing on any nominee that is officially opposed by the home state senators. This is why it’s so hard to get even a marginally conservative judge approved from blue states, much less someone in the mold of Clarence Thomas.
Even in red states with two GOP senators, the judicial nominees often reflect a legal mirror image of their political views, which are moderate at best. And in states with senators from opposing parties, Republicans have often cut deals to approve only those nominees who are acceptable to their home state Democrat senator.
The problem of home state RINOS and Democrats is further exacerbated by the fact that tradition tends to bind the president to maintaining state continuity in seats within a circuit court. According to CRS, just 13 percent of circuit court appointments since the Kennedy administration have changed state representation from the vacant seat. And it is downright mandated by law that every state has at least one judge on the given circuit court and that every nominee must at least reside within the circuit at the time of the appointment.
Consequently, if a president wants to fill a vacant seat from a state with a Democrat senator, he would be constrained by tradition from filling it with someone from a state with two Republicans, thereby avoiding a blue slip problem.
To begin with, it’s so hard to find Clarence Thomases in this profession. The limitation of state allocation rules and blue slip obstruction are killers. This is why despite swearing every time we will do a better job “appointing better judges,” we wind up with more Kennedys and Roberts on the lower courts. It’s also why outside of the geographical areas of the fifth and eighth circuits, it’s hard to appoint a string of reliable conservatives. There are three vacancies from the 3rd Circuit, for example, but it will be very hard to fill them with originalists given the geographical problem.
As such, Trump would have to expend as much political capital trying to “appoint better judges” in a meaningful way as he would by pursuing judicial reform. Yet the latter would actually solve the problem in the long run.
It’s quite evident that we still need judicial reform, but in the meantime Trump would be wise to fill the vacancies aggressively on circuit courts and make it clear to Senate Republicans that they are to promote originalists with the same gusto that Obama used to confirm anti-constitutionalists. (For more from the author of “‘Circuits’ or ‘Circuses’? Here’s Why We Desperately Need Judicial Reform at the Circuit Court Level” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/judge-gavel-1461966217cii.jpg12801920Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-15 22:45:482017-02-15 22:45:41‘Circuits’ or ‘Circuses’? Here’s Why We Desperately Need Judicial Reform at the Circuit Court Level
Here’s a news flash for Democrats and other Americans on the left: Four years ago, when Barack Obama was re-elected president, conservatives were just as depressed as you are now that Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won.
I describe this as news because this undoubtedly surprises many of you. You probably never gave a moment’s thought to how depressed conservatives were in 2012. (Why would you? Unlike you, we shun hysteria.) But believe me — we were.
Many of us believed that President Obama was doing great damage to America. Now we are convinced that he did more damage to America domestically, to America’s position the world and to the world at large than any other two-term president.
He left office with racial tensions — many of which he exacerbated — greater than at any time since the civil rights era half a century ago. He left the world’s worst regimes — Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and radical Islamist terror groups — stronger and more aggressive than before he became president. Economic growth never rose above 3 percent, a first for a two-term president. He nearly doubled the national debt and had little to nothing to show for it. Obamacare hurt more people financially than it helped medically, including physicians. More people than ever are on government aid. The list is far longer than this.
Moreover, just like most Democrats in 2016, most Republicans in 2012 expected to win. (Read more from the author of “Note to the Left: Four Years Ago, Conservatives Were Just as Depressed” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/man-390341_960_720.jpg635960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-14 20:27:332017-02-14 20:27:33Note to the Left: Four Years Ago, Conservatives Were Just as Depressed
People in Washington, D.C. are worried. Officials in the seat of the federal government have begun to express concern that President Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” by reducing the federal workforce. There are fears Trump’s plans to cut government spending will harm the city’s economy, increase unemployment, and generally puncture what has historically been a recession-proof bubble of economic activity.
Are they right to be worried? Well, yes and no. Assuming that Trump actually does follow through on his plans to reduce the federal workforce, some people will lose their jobs. Some will move out of the District, and others may even go on public assistance while they look for new sources of income. It will be a rocky road for some government employees, and this disruption will ripple over, at least temporarily, into other industries.
But that does not mean that draining the swamp will be a bad thing, or that it will have a net negative effect on the economy. In fact, we should expect just the opposite. The reason is that government jobs differ from private sector jobs in a fundamental way. In order for a job to exist in the private sector, it must produce something that people value. If a worker is not earning his employer more in revenue than he is costing in wages, the employer can boost profits by firing him. There are undoubtedly some bad businessmen who employ unproductive employees by mistake, but ultimately they will suffer for their ineptitude, and poorly managed businesses will perish as better ones take their place.
Not so with the government. The government worker collects a salary that is forcibly seized from the taxpayers. He needs not generate a profit, satisfy consumer demand, or produce anything of value at all. All he has to do is remain unnoticed by his superiors and he gets to keep collecting a paycheck at the public’s expense.
If these people lose their jobs, their labor will be freed up to engage in more productive pursuits that can actually contribute to society instead of leeching off of it. To understand this, imagine a whole city where everyone is employed digging holes and filling them back in again. If we eliminated all of those jobs, the temporary unemployment would be a hardship for the workers themselves. The resources devoted to the useless activity of hole-digging, however, could be put towards something useful instead, and the workers could devote their talents towards helping their fellow man. It would be indisputable that such a reallocation would be beneficial, in the long run at least. The reallocation that comes from draining the swamp would be comparably desirable.
The great French economist Frederic Bastiat illustrated this phenomenon with what is known as the “Broken Window Fallacy.” The fallacy holds that breaking windows is good for the economy because it provides work for glassmakers. What Bastiat realized was that a society not forced to constantly repair broken windows is free to exert its efforts in other directions. That way we can enjoy the benefit of functioning windows, but also of everything else that extra labor can produce. While bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. aren’t actively breaking windows, they might as well be, for all the harm they cause with overregulation, excessive taxation, and general interference with American economic activity. Ultimately, their loss, in the words of W.S. Gilbert, will be a distinct gain to society at large. (For more from the author of “Will Trump’s Plan to Drain the Swamp Leave DC High and Dry?” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/swamp-971210_960_720-1.jpg639960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-13 21:31:182017-02-13 21:31:18Will Trump’s Plan to Drain the Swamp Leave DC High and Dry?
