The New Center (Part 2 of 3)

(Part 1 - - - Part 2 - - - Part 3)

On those rare occasions that self-described centrists deign to discuss actual policy, I assume that their recommendations will consist of the following:

1. Common sense ideas that were decried as deeply unserious when recommended by liberals 10-15 years ago;
2. Conservative hobby horses from the Reagan years;
3. Extremely narrow positions which are of deep concern in the Beltway and ignored by 99.9% of voters.

Let's see if I'm right. The policy section - entitled "Ideas to Re-Center America" - consists of seven topic areas:

• Challenging Big Tech
• Protecting Innovation
• Work Matters
• Inclusive Growth
• Tax and Infrastructure
• New & Small Business
• Immigration

The two in italics are special and deserve their own post. This one will look at the other five.

Challenging Big Tech

Some of you know by now that I despise Facebook and Amazon in a way that's difficult to put into words. The fine folks in Our Wonderful Newsmedia are a little less certain as to their opinion on these companies. It seems like only yesterday that these idiots were begging Mark Zuckerberg to run for President, and now he's back to being the destroyer of the Kids These Days. The New Center is definitely on the negative side, being quite troubled over anti-competitive bullshit like this. I'd like to say that this is due to genuine concern over innovation, privacy or security, but scroll down a little bit and you begin to wonder:

Okay, that's not fair. It is a legitimate issue, albeit one that's perhaps less immediately important to most Americans than some other ones.

The suggestions for fixing this involve the application of various laws and precedents, including the Sherman Act, a 50's-era consent deal involving AT&T, and that Microsoft antitrust suit that petered out post-9/11 and ended up accomplishing very little. The authors even claim that the Microsoft suit "enabled the rise of Google," which doesn't seem quite right, but what do I know? It ultimately comes down to launching antitrust suits against these companies and just these companies as you'll see below.

As a layman, I have no earthly clue if the press drumbeat to save their cushy jobs break up these companies would work. It makes sense for Alphabet/Google (search engines being both critical to allowing ordinary people to use the internet and yet far too manpower intensive for any but the biggest companies to create from scratch), but Facebook? What would the aftermath even look like?

Protecting Innovation

So let's complain about the goddamn Chinese and their thieving ways, and how intellectual property law needs to be a lot stronger.

This is a mix of various "tech" themed policies that didn't quite fit into the above section. "Get Serious About Cybersecurity" - always a good idea, although it seems like the weak links are in the private sector. More basic research - also a good idea. Demonstrating their conservative roots, they are opposed to applied research because this would be "picking winners and losers." They favor this set of patent law reforms.

The one really troubling thing in this section is the authors hinting that a trade war with the PRC, while not desirable, may be necessary. Did I mention that these guys were bragging about how cooperative they found Trump?

Tax and Infrastructure

Now here's a plan I know you'll love. A few years back, some of the thinkers in Congress decided that the way to fund our needed multi-trillion dollar infrastructure problem was through a "repatriation holiday," which amounted to bribing companies with lower taxes in order to get them to (temporarily) quit using tax shelters. The winners at the New Center seem to think that this will generate enough money to fund infrastructure projects.

This is actually the New Center's signature proposal, and they are extremely proud of it. The notion seems to be that by taking something Democrats like (infrastructure) and stitching it to something Republicans like (massive honking tax cuts for corporations), that they've achieved bipartisan synthesis. Unfortunately, while they're happy to brag about all the Republicans they have on board (including Commodus in Orange), the "bipartisan" claim consists entirely of the fact that Chuck Schumer didn't slam the door in their faces when they tried this in 2015.

One issue with this plan might be that we tried it before and didn't quite get the results we wanted. Turns out that when you incentivize people for bad behavior, more people decide to hop on board. Granted, nixing tax havens ain't easy, but you'd think that an organization that's ready to instigate a multi-year anti-trust suit aimed at chopping Google in half would have the ambition to at least try and investigate tax shelters.

Unless of course they're really just Reaganite conservatives and thus in favor of cutting taxes in all situations, but that's obviously not true.

New & Small Business

STRANGLED BY RED TAPE: New and small businesses can’t hire the army of accountants, lawyers and compliance officers that big businesses rely on to stay ahead of the latest dictates coming from federal, state and local regulators.

I can't imagine where anyone gets the idea that these "centrists" are really embarrassed conservatives. This is, indeed, the deregulation section. Among the recommendations: weakening Frank-Dodd, forming a "regulatory improvement commission," creating a regulatory roadmap, and letting businesses use cash accounting for the first five years. There's also a section marked "enhance crowdfunding" but they don't clarify what the hell that means.

You know what never comes up here? Health care. The authors suggest that the Youngs aren't starting businesses because they are "STRANGLED BY RED TAPE," but they never consider the effect that reliable health insurance has on one's willingness to take risks, a phenomenon called "job lock." There's some evidence that the ACA encouraged people to start businesses, particularly among the disabled. An earlier study suggested that the CHIP program increased entrepreneurial behavior among people with small children, and...well, you get the point.

There are no Ideas to Re-Center America that concern health care. Funny, that - it seems like an important issue.

Immigration

As "centrists," the people behind the New Center aren't willing to oppose anything as popular as DACA. Much like their infrastructure plan, the idea is to create "bipartisanship" by taking a popular Democratic act and stapling Republican bullshit to it. This includes more border enforcement, electronic tracking to ensure that undocumented immigrants can't work, tighter tracking of visas and a de-emphasis of family visas (so we only get useful immigrants, y'see). And then there's this:

I can't imagine why anyone would think that these guys are conservatives. Would it shock you to learn that the "conservative alternative to DACA" also de-emphasizes family visas and contains provisions for expired visas? I'm sure that's just coincidence, though.

Next time: We get good and angry, which is always fun (for someone).

(Part 1 - - - Part 2 - - - Part 3)