Similar to Christmas, more happened on New Year’s Eve in rock history than one might think.
Today in 1961, the former Pendletones made their debut with their new name at the Long Beach Civic Auditorium in California: the Beach Boys:
Today in 1963, the Kinks made their live debut at the Lotus House Restaurant in London:
The number one single today in 1966:
The number one single today in 1967:
Today in 1970, Paul McCartney sued John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr to legally dissolve the Beatles.
The suit was settled exactly four years later.
Tonight at 8:30, 7:30 Central time NBC-TV played …
Vanity Fair tells the story of one of Star Trek’s favorite episodes, beginning with …
“The Trouble with Tribbles” was the first professional sale for David Gerrold, a 23-year-old California college student. An unknown budding writer in September 1966 when he saw Star Trek’s first episode, he almost immediately began thinking of story premises. One of them drew on his teenage experiences of raising frogs, mice, rats, and fish. “I loved animals,” recalled Gerrold, now an award-winning author of many science-fiction novels and stories, in a recent interview. “But all of those critters died on me.”
So in February 1967, he drew up a proposal for an episode he called “The Fuzzies.”
“My original conception was, ‘Aliens are always scary. What if they’re cute but we don’t realize they’re dangerous? What if you had white mice or gerbils that got onto the Enterprise and got out of control?’ ”
Gerrold envisioned a real ecological disaster. “My attitude was that it would be whimsical but that we would have a serious threat,” he said. Nowhere in his work was there to be found now-classic slapstick moments, like William Shatner’sCaptain Kirk getting buried in a mountain of tribbles. Gerrold also imagined the buffoonish and chortling Cyrano Jones, the interstellar trader who introduces the beasties to the Enterprise, as a Boris Karloff type. (“You can just see him stroking it and saying, ‘Can I interest you in a harmless little tribble? . . .’ ”)
That mix of comedy within an actually serious situation (as James Doohan observed, Captain Kirk could have lost his command for an admittedly stupdi situation), along with fantastic dialogue (see McCoy and Spock) is what makes this such a great episode.
It’s been official for just over a week, but it’s still hard to believe.
The Green Bay Packers will miss the postseason for the first time since the 2008 season.
To put that in perspective, the last time the Packers missed the playoffs George W. Bush was at the very end of his presidency, “The Dark Knight” was the top movie of the year and Brett Favre was a New York Jet.
Translation: it was a long time ago.
This means the Packers are in unfamiliar territory, both for them and their fans. The Packers would have tied an NFL record for consecutive seasons qualifying for the playoffs had they made it, yet many fans are demanding major changes from the general manager down to the head coach.
As for the Packers actually making those changes, it’s difficult to imagine much changing save a pending replacement of the defensive coordinator. Team president Mark Murphy will pump up both general manager Ted Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy’s record, citing making the postseason the previous eight seasons plus three NFC North championships and two NFC title game appearances in the past five years as proof the franchise is in good hands.
No matter where you fall in this debate, those are all facts. The Packers have had a tremendous amount of success the past few seasons, but in a city nicknamed “Titletown USA,” anything short of bringing home a Lombardi Trophy is ultimately a disappointment. Still, McCarthy and Thompson have kept the Packers in the upper echelon of the NFL and they are owed much respect and gratitude.
That being said, if you look at specifically the last three seasons of Packers football, the signs are there that it’s time for a change.
“But they just made the NFC championship last year, and they won a playoff game the year before that!” That is what some fans will say, but hear me out.
First, let’s look at 2015. The Packers offense — McCarthy’s baby — was sluggish for a vast majority of the year. In fact, had it not been for a Hail Mary perfectly executed, the Packers likely would have missed the playoffs and the playoff streak would have stopped at six seasons instead of eight. In short, Aaron Rodgers saved the day.
Now look at 2016. The Packers were 4-6 and the calls for McCarthy’s job were intensifying despite McCarthy declaring himself “a highly successful NFL head coach.” Rodgers then uttered the famous “run the table” comment and he went on a tear that led the Packers to within one game of the Super Bowl before they were run out of town by the Atlanta Falcons. Once again, Rodgers bailed the team out.
The 2017 season rolls around, and Rodgers is once again playing like an MVP. The Packers are 4-1 and fans are again dreaming of another postseason run.
Then Rodgers broke his right collarbone.
Everything went downhill from there. Without Rodgers around to consistently bail the team out, the Packers were exposed for what they really are beyond their all-world quarterback: a lousy football team. How lousy are they? They needed rallies to go to overtime in wins over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Cleveland Browns.
To repeat: The Packers nearly lost to one of the worst teams in NFL history when they rallied past Cleveland in overtime. The red flag officially went up for many fans after that game.
The bottom line in all this, in my opinion, is that is time for a change in Green Bay. McCarthy is a good coach, one who leads his team through adversity better than any coach in the league outside of Bill Belichick. He’s also by all accounts a great man whose family has given so much to the Green Bay community and Wisconsin as a whole.
Unfortunately, McCarthy in Green Bay has become Andy Reid in Philadelphia and Mike Shanahan in Denver. All were successful, but sometimes you just need a change. Reid never got close to the Super Bowl again after losing Donovan McNabb and Shanahan got to one AFC title game with Jake Plummer after John Elway retired. That’s where McCarthy appears to be in Green Bay. Everyone is now too comfortable, and the message has just gotten stale. He hasn’t lost the locker room, but it’s time to look at other options.
McCarthy’s contract is up after next season, so this will be an interesting situation to watch. Teams often don’t like coaches going into a season as a lame duck entering their final year, but Thompson gave Mike Sherman an extension in 2005 before firing him at the end of that season.
Speaking of Thompson, he deserves praise for being the best steward of the franchise since Ron Wolf. He’s endured more unfair fan criticism than any other GM in the league. Fans bemoan his lack of activity in free agency then he goes out and signs Martellus Bennett. We all know how that ended and some of those same fans yelled at Thompson when Bennett was released. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, folks.
Thompson still clearly enjoys scouting, but it might be time for a change in the front office too. The Packers only made the playoffs the previous two seasons by the sheer will of their franchise quarterback. Take Rodgers out of the equation and you see just how poor of a roster Thompson has built. He clearly did not learn the lessons of Wolf, his mentor and predecessor. “Oh we have Aaron, he’ll keep us relevant,” has held the Packers back much like the same phrase except with Brett Favre’s name held Wolf — and particularly Mike Sherman — back in the early-to-mid-2000s. The Packers should have followed the Patriots and built a strong team around their quarterback and not just surround him with adequate talent.
As someone who has backed Thompson and McCarthy throughout the past several years, this is incredibly tough to write. They brought a lot of success to the storied franchise and joy to the fans. Both men will one day take their place in the Packers Hall of Fame.
Unfortunately, it’s just time for a change.
A better comparison for this season is 2006, before which the Packers relieved GM/coach Mike Sherman of the first half of his title, replacing him with Thompson, who relieved Sherman of further employment following a 4–12 season. In his first three seasons, McCarthy went 8–8, 13–3 (and an overtime loss in the NFC championship) and 6–10 in 2008, Rodgers’ first season as quarterback.
It is interesting to note that, based on social media comments, the order of people Packer fans would like to see replaced starts with defensive coordinator Dom Capers, followed by Thompson, followed quite a distance later by McCarthy. This is despite the fact that the Packers’ rankings in scoring defense (21st) and offense (19th) are similar compared with the rest of the league. The defense did not lose to Baltimore or Minnesota; the offense failed to score, and the defense deserves credit for giving up only nine points to Seattle in the opening 17–9 win. What is worse — giving up more than 30 points five times, or scoring less than 20 points six times?
Only two of the Packers’ eight losses were by one score — Pittsburgh, where quarterback Brett Hundley arguably played his best game (and yes, the defense failed), and Carolina, Rodgers’ aborted comeback attempt. Before the season I predicted the losses at Atlanta, Minnesota and Pittsburgh; I predicted a loss in Dallas, which didn’t happen. What torpedoed this season was the unpardonable sin of losing at home to New Orleans, Detroit and Baltimore, all of which were losses by more than a touchdown.
For what it’s worth, I have read a few predictions of NFL coaches who are about to coach their last games this weekend. None of them list McCarthy.
Regardless of Packer fans’ opinion, Capers is highly regarded in the NFL. The bigger issue with the defense is the players, and that goes past Capers to his boss’ boss, Thompson. The Packers have a long list of defensive draft failures, and if your plan is to develop draft picks and not sign free agents, your draft picks better pan out, but many of the Packers’ draft picks on defense have not.
Unfortunately, the same can be said about Thompson’s acquisitions this year, two in particular — tight ends Martellus Bennett and Lance Kendricks. If you’re stuck with an inexperienced quarterback, the short passing game is essential, but whatever the Packers paid Bennett and Kendricks was wasted money.
I often say on this blog (because it’s true) that doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. A lot of Packer fans want to see Thompson replaced by Eliot Wolf, the Packers’ director — football operations, and son of Ron. The young Wolf was a candidate for the Giants’ GM job, and is reported to be a candidate for other positions. Thompson has gotten enormous plaudits in the NFL for his ability to evaluate talent, but evidently that’s no longer working so well in Green Bay. Tom Silverstein notes the Packers have more room to pursue free agents next year due to a larger salary cap, but for every Charles Woodson, the Packers have had a Joe Johnson and then some. (Though it’s not as if the Packers have done very well in the draft, as previously noted.)
As for McCarthy, he would be snapped up nearly immediately if fired. That may be OK to some fans, but Packer fans who remember the franchise’s history should remember that a new coach doesn’t necessarily lead to better on-the-field results (see Bengtson, Phil, and Rhodes, Ray). A new GM and coach would likely mean you could write off the 2018 season, and even if Rodgers returns (which is far from a sure thing), he doesn’t have that many years left.
The real reason for this season’s failure is Thompson’s responsibility — players, or lack thereof. Schemes don’t matter as much as you’d think, and coaching matters, but not as much as player talent does. Blame Capers if you like for poor defensive play, but Capers can only work with what he’s provided, and it’s not as if he forgot how to coach in the past few seasons. I have yet to read anyone with actual NFL expertise claim the Packers are running a bad defensive scheme. It’s always the players, for better and/or worse.
Mike Rowe got theological on Tuesday:
Can someone please tell me if this is a work day? If it’s not, why not? And if it is, how come no one is working? What about tomorrow? For that matter, what about the rest of the week? I’ve been asking around, and increasingly, it seems like no one is quite sure what to do when Christmas falls on a Monday. Wouldn’t it be simpler if we celebrated Christmas on the third Thursday of every December, like we do with Thanksgiving every November?
I ran this by the minister at church on Christmas morning, and he was surprisingly supportive. I thought I might get some push-back regarding the embrace of a fungible birthdate for Jesus, but he assured me no one has the faintest idea when the birth actually occurred. This triggered a lively debate among a dozen or so congregants, including a very knowledgeable Elder who explained to all assembled that an angel named Gabriel revealed to a man named Zechariah that his wife – a woman called Elizabeth – would conceive a baby called John (who later become a famous Baptizer,) while Zechariah was performing his priestly duties on the Day of Atonement, also known as Yom Kippur.
At this point, a Deacon named Roger jumped in to explain that Yom Kippur always falls in late September or early October. According to the Gospel of Luke, when Gabriel later announced to Mary that she would conceive Jesus, Mary went to visit Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was at that time in the sixth month of her pregnancy. Ergo, if Elizabeth conceived in late September, and Mary visited her in her sixth month, that means Mary conceived Jesus and visited Elizabeth in late March. And if Mary conceived Jesus in late March, that places his birth sometime in late December.
With great respect to the Elder and the Deacon and the apostle Luke, I commented that “sometime in late December” is no more precise that “the third Thursday of December,” and the choir director seemed to agree, adding that, “If we accept the virgin birth as fact, we should also consider the possibility that Mary’s pregnancy didn’t comport with all the traditional time-frames.”
Soon, the conversation grew animated. I tried to change the subject to the importance of eliminating daylight savings time, but it was too late, so I quietly excused myself from the fray …
Well, there’s an additional time–space continuum issue. Christians commemorate Good Friday, Jesus Christ’s death, and Easter, Jesus Christ’s rising from the dead, on different dates every year. Those days are determined by the Jewish Passover (as depicted in the Gospels, since Jesus was a devout Jew), which itself takes place the first full moon after the vernal equinox. That means that Easter can be anywhere from March 22 (last in 1818, and not again until 2285) to April 25 (last in 1943 and not again until 2038), according to the always accurate Wikipedia. So we celebrate Christmas not knowing if it’s the right date (or if it was just, shall we say, borrowed by the early church from the pagans celebrating, for reasons unknown to anyone stuck in this frozen wasteland, the winter solstice), and we celebrate Easter with only one of those 34 days being the date of the Resurrection.
Ponder all this as you’re toasting the New Year sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning.
The Billboard Top 100 should have been renamed the Elvis Presley 10 and Everyone Else 90 today in 1956, because Presley had 10 of the top 100 singles.
William McGurn has one point of view about The Donald’s first year as president …
This time one year ago, the assumption dominating political coverage was that the only people more stupid than Donald Trump were the deplorables who elected him.
Since then, of course, President-elect Trump has become President Trump. Over his 11 months in office, he has put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and four times as many judges on the appellate courts as Barack Obama did his first year; recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; withdrawn from the Paris climate accord; adopted a more resolute policy on Afghanistan than the one he’d campaigned on; rolled back the mandate forcing Catholic nuns, among others, to provide employees with contraception and abortifacients; signed legislation to open up drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; initiated a bold, deregulatory assault on the administrative state—and topped it all off with the first major overhaul of the tax code in more than 30 years.
And yet that Mr. Trump is a very stupid man remains the assumption dominating his press coverage.
Let this columnist confess: He did not see Mr. Trump’s achievements coming, at least at first. In the worst sense, populism means pandering to public appetites at the expense of sound policy. Too often populists who get themselves elected find either that they cannot implement what they promised, or that when they do, there are disastrous and unexpected consequences.
Add to this the sorry experience America had recently had with men, also outside conventional politics, who ran successfully for governorships: former pro wrestler and Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. Their respective administrations each began with high enthusiasm but ended in defeat and disillusionment. What would make anyone think Mr. Trump would do better?
Start with Mr. Ventura. His populism, like Mr. Trump’s, featured open ridicule of the press. At one point he issued press cards listing them as “official jackals.” Also like Mr. Trump, he was treated as simple-minded because he was not a professional pol. When David Letterman listed his top 10 campaign slogans for Mr. Ventura, No. 1 was “it’s the stupidity, stupid.”
In his first year Mr. Ventura’s approval rating soared to 73%, and while in office he did manage to push through tax rebates and a property-tax reform. By his last year, however, his vetoes were regularly overridden, spending had shot up, and the magic was gone. In the end, he decided against seeking a second term.
Next came Mr. Schwarzenegger, who in 2003 announced his run for governor on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Schwarzenegger’s pitch was essentially Mr. Trump’s: The state’s politics had been so corrupted by the political class that Californians needed a strongman from the outside to shake it up.
The Governator did succeed in getting himself re-elected three years later, which is more than Mr. Ventura did. In the end, however, he was defeated by those he’d denounced as the “girlie men” of Sacramento, and his package of reforms went nowhere. The man who entered office promising to cut spending and revive the state’s economy ended up signing a huge tax increase, while debt nearly tripled under his watch.
Now we have President Trump. In one sense he is not unique: Almost all GOP presidents are stereotyped as not very bright. Ask Ike, or George W. Bush, or even Lincoln. Nor is it uncommon, in the headiness of a White House, for even the lowliest staffer to come to regard himself as the intellectual superior of the president he works for.
In Mr. Trump’s case, critics equate lowbrow tastes (e.g., well-done steaks covered in ketchup) as confirmation of a lack of brainpower. It can make for great sport. But starting out with the assumption that the president you are covering is a boob can prove debilitating to clear judgment.
Quick show of hands: How many of those in the press who continue to dismiss Mr. Trump as stupid publicly asserted he could never win the 2016 election—or would never get anyone decent to work for him in the unlikely miracle he did get elected?
The Trump presidency may still go poof for any number of reasons—if the promised economic growth doesn’t materialize, if the public concludes that his inability to ignore slights on Twitter is getting the best of his presidency, or if Democrats manage to leverage his low approval ratings and polarizing personality into a recapture of the House and Senate this coming November. And yes, it’s possible to regard Mr. Trump’s presidency as not worth the price.
But stupid? Perhaps the best advice for anti-Trumpers comes from one of their own, a Vermont Democrat named Jason Lorber. Way back in April, in an article for the Burlington Free Press, the retired state politician wrote that “while it may be good for a chuckle, calling or even thinking someone else stupid is virtually guaranteed to give them the last laugh.”
Is that not what Mr. Trump is now enjoying at the close of his first year?
… and Jonah Goldberg has another:
Contrary to what many predicted, President Trump’s end-of-year accomplishment list isn’t that skimpy.
That’s an analytical observation. For many, particularly liberals and Democrats, Trump’s first year hasn’t been merely bad. It’s a great evil, a grievous wound to the American body politic.
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. Trump is the most unpopular first-year president in American history, for reasons far beyond mere bad press.
Still, among conservatives, the tally of “wins” has sparked some intramural debates. The most prominent one is how Trump skeptics and avowed Never Trumpers should respond to those wins. For writers such as the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and The Atlantic’s David Frum, the only legitimate response is either to ignore these successes or denigrate them, lest people lose sight of the threat Trump poses to the country. Others, including myself, argue instead that one needn’t deny the merits of a policy victory simply because the president might get credit for it.
On one level, the president always gets the credit — or blame — for anything that happens on his watch. But Trump poses a challenge to such superficial scorekeeping. No president in American history has rejected Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here” motto as vehemently or consistently as this one. He never accepts responsibility for his own mistakes, never mind those of his administration or party. When American troops die, the commander in chief blames “the generals.” When legislation fails, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the “establishment” are at fault.
Trump boosters agree. Conservative writer Roger Simon argues that all “remaining Never Trumpers” must apologize for being wrong about the president. He chalks up Trump’s “astoundingly successful” first year to the fact the president is a “quick study.”
But what evidence is there that Trump has actually learned the art of presidential management?
Aside from the mandatory flattery required of Republican elected officials, there’s remarkably little testimony that Trump has involved himself in the process of governing. Tax reform was carried across the finish line by the GOP congressional leadership. Net neutrality was repealed by independent Republicans at the Federal Communications Commission.
Foreign policy is a more mixed bag. If the president deserves credit for the defeat of Islamic State, it’s because he let “the generals” do their thing. On the other hand, credit (or blame) for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris accord on climate change certainly goes to him.
In general, it seems to me that Trump’s success (such as it is) is less attributable to sudden mastery of the issues than to staying out of the way of rank-and-file Republican policymakers, activists, and bureaucrats.
For instance, the task of selecting judicial appointees, starting with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, has largely been outsourced to the Federalist Society. When the president revealed his new national-security strategy last week, his speech — the usual campaign blather — had only a passing resemblance to the underlying document. The tax bill is clearly more in line with House Speaker Paul Ryan’s ideology than candidate Trump’s supposed populism. As for a counter-example: When Trump was “hands-on” with Obamacare repeal, he often revealed he didn’t even know what was in the legislation.
In 2016, some conservatives argued that Republicans should vote as if we live in a parliamentary democracy, electing a party, not a person. Trump’s 3,000 political appointees would be better than Hillary Clinton’s. That argument had its flaws, not least that voters tend not to compartmentalize that way — which is why the GOP faces a potential bloodbath in the 2018 midterms.
But there’s merit to it as well. To listen to Trump’s cheerleaders, the biggest obstacle to conservative victories is the party establishment, when in reality it looks more like it’s running the show.
The Wall Street Journal:
Congress passed the most sweeping tax reform since 1986 on Wednesday, and with any luck that success for the country will trigger a new reform debate in many states. To wit, how much will they have to cut income-tax rates to retain and attract the high-income earners who finance so much of their state budgets?
You can figure out who most needs reform by the decibels of protest. Amid other apocalyptic warnings, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last weekend declared that the GOP bill’s limit on the state-and-local tax deduction will trigger “an economic civil war” between high- and low-tax states. California Governor Jerry Brown has likened Republicans to “mafia thugs” while Mr. Cuomo calls the bill a “dagger at the economic heart of New York.” By heart, he apparently means the state’s top earners who pay for Albany’s ever-higher spending.
The truth is that few taxpayers even in high tax states will be hurt because they won’t need a deduction beyond the $10,000 state-and-local cap in the bill. Tax writers estimate that only about 5% of households will even itemize their deductions because the bill nearly doubles the standard deduction to $24,000. Most affluent households who do itemize will also be held harmless because of tax-rate reductions.
But the tax math will be tricky for many high-earners in states with the highest tax rates. The bill reduces the top federal tax rate to 37% from 39.6% and increases the threshold at which it kicks in to $600,000 from $470,000 for couples filing jointly. Our friend Don Luskin did the math and says that high earners in states with top rates exceeding 6.56% could see their tax bills increase.
The nearby table shows the 17 states with top income-tax rates exceeding 6.56%. The four with the highest income tax rates have Democratic Governors—California, New York, Oregon and Minnesota—and liberal political cultures heavily influenced by public unions. The 12.7% rate is for New York City and the rate for the rest of the state is still high at 8.82%. But Republicans control the governorships and legislatures in six of the 17 states.
Iowa ranks fifth with a top rate of 8.98% that hits at a mere $70,785 for married couples, which is more punitive than even New Jersey’s 8.97% that hits households making more than $500,000. Wisconsin (7.65%), Idaho (7.4%), South Carolina (7%), Arkansas (6.9%) and Nebraska (6.84%) are among Donald Trump -voting states that also make the high-tax list.
Remarkably enough, some high earners in Illinois will experience a cut in their marginal rate, at least as long as GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner can stop his Democratic legislature from raising taxes above the state’s 4.95% flat rate. Yet taxpayers in Indiana will get a bigger net tax cut because the state’s top income-tax rate is 3.23%.
This ought to put pressure on high-tax Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota to reduce their rates. If Governor Scott Walker wants another policy victory as he runs for re-election next year, he should propose an across-the-board tax-rate cut in January to keep Wisconsin competitive.
Messrs. Brown and Cuomo know that limiting the deduction will increase the existing rate divide between high- and low-tax states. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been losing billions of dollars each year in adjusted gross income from high earners fleeing to lower tax climes like Florida. Nevada will become an even more attractive tax haven for wealthy Californians.
The problem is more acute when you consider that the top 1% of earners pay nearly 50% of state income taxes in California and New York, and 37% in New Jersey. States may experience significant budget carnage if more high earners defect. To head off a high-earner revolt, Mr. Cuomo could seek to eliminate the millionaire’s tax he campaigned against in 2010 but has repeatedly extended. Mr. Brown could campaign to repeal the 3% surcharge on millionaires he championed in 2012.
On the political evidence so far, they will do no such thing. Democrats instead plan to use the elimination of the state-and-local tax deduction to bludgeon Republicans in the 2018 elections, even as they continue to drive their high earners out of state. But the smarter states and politicians will recognize reality and reform their tax codes to make their states more taxpayer friendly.
To this, the Badger Institute says;
Wisconsin’s tax code “is one of the worst-structured state tax systems in the country,” the Tax Foundation’s Scott Drenkard told the Badger Institute. That’s why we’re partnering with the Tax Foundation in 2018 to identify the tax mix and rates that will ease the burden on residents and make Wisconsin more competitive.
Well, that’s good, not to mention overdue. The way the state’s budget process works means that the Journal’s request to cut taxes this coming year won’t happen. The budget, as we know from Budgetorama 2017, gets created after the fall elections, and the budget includes both spending and taxes, along with policy that doesn’t belong in a budget but has been put there by both parties since approximately 1849.
As readers know, had state and local government spending been limited to inflation plus population growth, government would be half the size it is today, and Wisconsinites would be infinitely better off. That is why Republican claims of fiscal prudence will ring hollow until they enact constitutional limitations (which require voter approval, and if not now, when?) on state and local government spending and taxation, to prevent future Republicans and Democrats and non-partisans from growing government.
State taxes could, however, be an issue in the November elections, both for governor and the Legislature. Republicans can point to the tax cuts that have taken place (including the elimination of the state property tax), though those tax cuts are not large enough. Democrats who claim the federal tax cuts aren’t middle-class friendly can suggest their own state tax cuts and what budget cuts they would make to pay for them. (Raising taxes is never a correct answer.)
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton:
As an assistant secretary of state in the George H.W. Bush administration, I worked vigorously to repeal a hateful United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. Foreign diplomats frequently told me the effort was unnecessary. My Soviet counterpart, for example, said Resolution 3379 was only a piece of paper gathering dust on a shelf. Why stir up old controversies years after its 1975 adoption?
We ignored the foreign objections and persisted because that abominable resolution cast a stain of illegitimacy and anti-Semitism on the U.N. It paid off. On Dec. 16, 1991, the General Assembly rescinded the offensive language.
Now, a quarter-century later, the U.N. has come close to repeating Resolution 3379’s original sin. Last week the U.N. showed its true colors with a 128-9 vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This seemingly lopsided outcome obscured a significant victory and major opportunity for the president. Thirty-five countries abstained, and 21 didn’t vote at all. Days earlier the Security Council had endorsed similar language, 14-1, defeated only by the U.S. veto. The margin narrowed significantly once Mr. Trump threatened to penalize countries that voted against the U.S. This demonstrated once again that America is heard much more clearly at the U.N. when it puts its money where its mouth is. (In related news, Guatemala announced Sunday it will move its embassy to Jerusalem, a good example for others.)
While imposing financial repercussions on individual governments is entirely legitimate, the White House should also reconsider how Washington funds the U.N. more broadly. Should the U.S. forthrightly withdraw from some U.N. bodies (as we have from UNESCO and as Israel announced its intention to do on Friday)? Should others be partially or totally defunded? What should the government do with surplus money if it does withhold funds?
Despite decades of U.N. “reform” efforts, little or nothing in its culture or effectiveness has changed. Instead, despite providing the body with a disproportionate share of its funding, the U.S. is subjected to autos-da-fé on a regular basis. The only consolation, at least to date, is that this global virtue-signaling has not yet included burning the U.S. ambassador at the stake.
Turtle Bay has been impervious to reform largely because most U.N. budgets are financed through effectively mandatory contributions. Under this system, calculated by a “capacity to pay” formula, each U.N. member is assigned a fixed percentage of each agency’s budget to contribute. The highest assessment is 22%, paid by the U.S. This far exceeds other major economies, whose contribution levels are based on prevailing exchange rates rather than purchasing power parity. China’s assessment is just under 8%.
Why does the U.S. tolerate this? It is either consistently outvoted when setting the budgets that determine contributions or has joined the “consensus” to avoid the appearance of losing. Yet dodging embarrassing votes means acquiescing to increasingly high expenditures.
The U.S. should reject this international taxation regime and move instead to voluntary contributions. This means paying only for what the country wants—and expecting to get what it pays for. Agencies failing to deliver will see their budgets cut, modestly or substantially. Perhaps America will depart some organizations entirely. This is a performance incentive the current assessment-taxation system simply does not provide.
Start with the U.N. Human Rights Council. Though notorious for its anti-Israel bias, the organization has never hesitated to abuse America. How many know that earlier this year the U.N. dispatched a special rapporteur to investigate poverty in the U.S.? American taxpayers effectively paid a progressive professor to lecture them about how evil their country is.
The U.N.’s five regional economic and social councils, which have no concrete accomplishments, don’t deserve American funding either. If nations believe these regional organizations are worthwhile—a distinctly dubious proposition—they are entirely free to fund them. Why America is assessed to support them is incomprehensible.
Next come vast swaths of U.N. bureaucracy. Most of these budgets could be slashed with little or no real-world impact. Start with the Office for Disarmament Affairs. The U.N. Development Program is another example. Significant savings could be realized by reducing other U.N. offices that are little more than self-licking ice cream cones, including many dealing with “Palestinian” questions. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees could be consolidated into the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Many U.N. specialized and technical agencies do important work, adhere to their mandates and abjure international politics. A few examples: the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. They shouldn’t be shuttered, but they also deserve closer scrutiny.
Some will argue incorrectly that unilaterally moving to voluntary contributions violates the U.N. Charter. In construing treaties, like contracts, parties are absolved from performance when others violate their commitments. Defenders of the assessed-contribution model would doubtless not enjoy estimating how often the charter has been violated since 1945.
If the U.S. moved first, Japan and some European Union countries might well follow America’s lead. Elites love the U.N., but they would have a tough time explaining to voters why they are not insisting their contributions be used effectively, as America has. Apart from risking the loss of a meaningless General Assembly vote—the Security Council vote and veto being written into the Charter itself—the U.S. has nothing substantial to lose.
Thus could Mr. Trump revolutionize the U.N. system. The swamp in Turtle Bay might be drained much more quickly than the one in Washington.
Or the U.S. could tell the UN to leave. The UN includes countries that are not friends of the U.S., and could be said to be enemies of the U.S. — for instance, Iran. Indeed, it could be argued that the U.S. and actual democracies should form their own national organization and leave the Muslim theocracies and other enemies of the U.S. to stew in their own hatreds. The moral relativism of the UN is one reason why Donald Trump is president.
Proof that Republicans know the proper role of the UN and Democrats do not can be found in the list of UN ambassadors appointed by GOP presidents — Jeane Kirkpatrick by Ronald Reagan, Madeline Albright by Bill Clinton, Bolton by George W. Bush, Susan Rice and Samantha Power by Barack Obama, and now Nikki Haley by Trump. Democratic UN ambassadors bend over to the UN; Republican U.S. ambassadors (including Kirkpatrick, who was actually a Democrat) stand up to the UN and its collecting of America-haters and anti-Semites.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 