Bringing Back Joe? Why?

There seems to be a high-level campaign to put Joe Biden back on the public stage:

Former President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will join ABC's "The View" on Thursday for their first joint interview post-presidency.

The couple will join the show live in-studio to discuss life after the White House, the Democratic Party's election losses in 2024, and the current political landscape following President Donald Trump's first 100 days, ABC News reported.

The former president had his first post-White House interview with the BBC on Wednesday, in which he criticized President Trump's foreign policy, saying his peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would be "modern-day appeasement," and slammed the Republican president's threats to obtain Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.

Via Politico this morning,

In a sign of Biden’s intent to remain engaged publicly, his inner circle tapped Chris Meagher, a former Biden deputy press secretary and Defense Department spokesperson, to help him transition past the first 100 days of the Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the hire and granted anonymity to speak freely.

Meagher, who has worked for former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, played an instrumental role in booking Biden’s appearance on The View on Thursday, the people said, his first live interview since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

According to CNN last month,

Joe Biden has been hankering to do more. Many leading Democrats across the country — including some former top aides and close allies, who note they’re sad to say it — are desperate for the former president to stick to a quiet retirement.

But Tuesday in Chicago, Biden waded into one of the most charged political fights set off by President Donald Trump. The first big public speech of Biden’s post-presidency focused on protecting Social Security and comes as many Democrats stage a national day of action against feared cuts to the program, with protests planned across the country.

. . . Asked by CNN about hearing from the former president since January 20, one longtime supporter and donor said only this: “No. Thank God.”

. . . Only a few of Biden’s most loyal aides stayed with him, mainly those who were the last fighting for him to stay in the presidential race. He’s been mostly at home in Delaware, coming back to an office in Washington about once a week, often via his beloved Amtrak. He’ll occasionally get spotted around Wilmington, but his public appearances have been limited to a Model United Nations conference in New York, a St. Patrick’s Day brunch in Delaware and accepting a lifetime achievement award from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers at the union’s convention in Washington this month.

Apparently this is about to change, although the big question is whether anything will change with Joe.

Biden’s BBC interview bucked the longstanding tradition of presidents keeping their counsel about their successors. In it, he condemned Trump’s expansionist fantasies and expressed his contempt for the Trump White House’s treatment of America’s traditional allies.

“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that?” Biden asked. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”

Reaction from the White House after the interview suggested there's nothing new:

Joe Biden is a complete disgrace to this country and the office he occupied. He has clearly lost all mental faculties and his handlers thought it'd be a good idea for him to do an interview and incoherently mumble his way through every answer.

Sadly, this feels like abuse. https://t.co/UKkysv1lKs

— Steven Cheung (@StevenCheung47) May 7, 2025

This has actually been in the works for some time. According to NBC News bzck in March,

Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.

Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.

So far, Biden's overture seems to have fallen flat. Democrats find themselves adrift, casting about for a compelling messenger.

Whoever that is, it's not Biden, many party activists and donors contend. He's tethered to the 2024 defeat and, at 82, is a symbol more of the party's past than its future, they argue.

“Who’s going to want Joe Biden back in the game?” said a major Biden supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him.

The problem for the Democrats is that each time either Joe or Kamala reappears, it only serves as a reminder that the country made the right choice last November. It appears that the White House has contingency plans in case there are further recurrences:

The Trump administration is making plans to release the audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents and raised questions about his mental acuity, according to two Republicans briefed by top Trump officials.

The details of the plan are in flux and it is not clear whether President Donald Trump and his advisers have made a final decision to make the audio public.

Biden’s camp is girding for the possible release, said two people familiar with the former president’s preparations and granted anonymity to speak freely.

A deadline of sorts is approaching on May 20: In separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by conservative groups like Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation and various news organizations, the Justice Department has been ordered by a judge to say whether it will stand by Biden’s assertion of executive privilege to block the release of the tapes. Last May, Biden and his Justice Department claimed releasing the tapes would have a chilling effect on witnesses cooperating in high-profile investigations.

John Nolte comments at Breitbart,

The Trump White House might be hedging on the public release of the Hur interview, fearing the release might set a precedent that could undermine executive privilege in the future.

I suspect Trump's instinct will be to release the interview. On one hand, it's hard not to think the idea of keeping Joe in the public eye is the brainchild of Dr Jill, with Hunter possibly pushing it as well. On the other, it doesn't sound as if anyone on the Democrat side is powerful enough to stop it. Mark Halperin, though, has possibly the most insightful take:

I talked to someone very familiar with the Bidens, and I think they've pointed out something that I'm gonna say now that to me is the explanation, or at least part of the explanation, which is Biden Inc has collapsed. All those Biden grandkids had a lavish lifestyle which they very much liked. Hunter made hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. Joe as a former president is not in a position to get the kinds of paid speeches, corporate boards, book deal. Biden Inc needs a source of revenue. . . . Hunter does not have great earning capacity.

This may be true, but we should also keep in mind that Biden Inc was never more than smoke and mirrors. Joe likely owes many millions at this point, especially after he seems to have funded Hunter's lifestyle and many of his legal bills throughout his presidency. How can Joe possibly make this up now?

“Just The Way It Is.”

In his Oval Offixce meeting with Canada Prime Minister Carney, Trump simply restated in slightly different words what his negotiating position has been ever since Justin Trudeau paid him a visit last November at Mar-a-Lago.

MEDIA: “Is there anything the Prime Minister can say to you today to change your mind on tariffing Canada?” … “Is there anything he can say to you, in the course of your meeting today, that could get you to lift tariffs on Canada?”

TRUMP: “No.”

MEDIA: “Why not?”

TRUMP: “Just the way it is.”

He expanded in a Truth Social post:

“We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us!” he went on.

“That will be, most likely, my only question of consequence,” the president wrote.

The implication is that if Canada wants to remain a separate country, there will be tariffs if they try to sell into the US. If they want to become a state, there won't be tariffs. He also restated his position on how much of Canada he wanted -- we're not going to mess around with just Alberta:

Trump later gave more extensive commentary on a possible North American political union, calling the US-Canada border an “artificial line” and saying it would lead to a “massive tax cut” for those north of the frontier.

“When you look at that beautiful formation [on a map] when it’s together — I’m a very artistic person — but when I looked at that, I said, ‘That’s the way it was meant to be,'” Trump said.

“But we’re not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it,” he went on, adding that “it really would be a wonderful marriage because it’s two places that get along very well.”

But let's put this in the context of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's remarks on Monday, which I discussed in yesterday's post. In raising the possibility of negotiating with Ottawa, she's trying to triangulate, the way Henry Kissinger used to do in negotiations with the Soviets:"I have a reasonable position here, but I can restrain Nixon only so far. I can probably get him to buy into this, but if you won't go along, he'll become enraged, and I can't predict what he'll do otherwise."

Premier Smith is taking a similar tack with Ottawa. "I've got this separatist element to deal with. They're more than just a fringe, and I don't agree with them, but if they want to put separation on the ballot, I can restrain them only so far, and I can't predict what might happen if they get out of control. I do have this list of grievances that for some reason sound a lot like Jefferson's grievances against King George, and this might remind you of what could happen if we can't work things out."

If Alberta were to join the US by itself, it would be the rough equivalent of Arizona joining Mexico, but only a very, very rough one. It would mean two border checks like Tijuana or Juarez for trucks and cars driving from Texas to California via I-10 or I-40, but for the US, that's just a relative nuisance, the traffic would just detour via Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Not so for Canada, there's no serious detour north around Alberta, the weather wouldn't allow it (remember the Ice Road Truckers TV show?).

Ottawa will never tolerate any situation where it loses control over its link to British Columbia. That's going to be a given as long as Ottawa is Ottawa. Any polite demand for negotiation from Premier Smith based on the idea that Alberta will separate if Ottawa doesn't agree to talk is going to be a non-starter, Ottawa will always determine the terms on which a province separates, and especially for either Alberta or Saskatchewan, that will be never.

I suspect Trump had already gamed this out even before Justin Trudeau paid him a visit last fall. Ottawa might theoretically tolerate it if, say, Nova Scotia wanted to separate, but Ottawa knows Nova Scotia will never want to do this, so it doesn't matter. On the other hand, Ottawa will never tolerate Alberta separating. As a result, the only way part of Canada can join the US is if all of it joins.

I suspect this is behind his saying, “Just the way it is” in the Oval Office yesterday. He also restated the view of negotiation he expressed earlier with Time that I quoted yesterday:

[T]he deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it. They don't have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries.

As he put it yesterday,

Think of us as a super-luxury store, a store that has the goods. You’re going to come and you’re going to pay a price, and we’re going to give you a very good price.

The US doesn't need Canada's cars, oil, aluminum, or lumber. Canada needs the US markets. How much is Canada willing to pay? Put differently, Canada has been getting stuff for free up to now, but that's got to change. Canada naturally has the option not to do business with the US. This is what dawned on Justin Trudeau. I suspect things will change, faster than we might expect. I'm more convinced that Alberta separatism is a dead end, an unnecessary complication.

Alberta's Premier Smith And The Canadian Dilemma

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been somewhat in the US news lately, since she announced lowering the bar on allowing citizen initiatives to be put on the ballot, which would inevitably bring the question of Alberta leaving Canada to a vote. This in turn was prompted by Mark Carney's win in last week's election. Yesterday, she addressed Albertans on how she plans to navigate the province's conflicts with Ottawa. The full text of her address is here.

I can't help but put this in the context of my post here Sunday on the message Justin Trudeau brought to Trump at Mar-a-Lago following Trump's victory in the 2024 US election, that if President Trump were to make the Canadian government face reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse on itself economically and cease to exist.

What Premier Smith proposes to do is renegotiate the relationship between Alberta and Ottawa on somewhat similar grounds in the wake of the growing popularity of the Alberta separation movement, something she herself stoked by making it easier to put separation on the ballot without herself endorsing it, or at least, not quite:

We are well aware that there is large and growing number of Albertans that have lost hope in Alberta having a free and prosperous future as a part of Canada. Many of these Albertans are organizing petitions to trigger a citizen-initiated referendum, as I mentioned earlier. The vast majority of these individuals are not fringe voices to be marginalized or vilified – they are loyal Albertans.

. . . As most Albertans know, I have repeatedly stated I do not support Alberta separating from Canada. I personally still have hope that there is a path forward for a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.

Nevertheless, her list of grievances against the national government contains what must certainly be conscious echoes of the US Declaration of Independence ("He has refused his Assent to Laws. . ."):

They have imposed net-zero mandates on our natural gas-based power grid causing investment in reliable generation from natural gas to flee, thereby endangering the future stability of our power grid, and risking future blackouts and spikes in electricity costs for Alberta families and businesses.

They have attacked our food producers with methane taxes, onerous regulations on fertilizer, electric vehicle mandates, and many other destructive policies that have hiked costs on our farmers and ranchers, and driven billions of dollars of investment in agriculture elsewhere.

They have interfered in provincial jurisdiction time and again. From taking over the regulation of plastics, to mandating how we operate child care, health care and dental care, to harassing law abiding firearms owners, to dozens of other examples of unconstitutional interference.

The remedy she proposes doesn't strike me as especially promising:

As a start, I will soon appoint a Special Negotiating Team to represent our province in negotiations with the federal government on the following reforms requested by our province. We hope this will result in a binding agreement that Albertans can have confidence in – call it an Alberta Accord if you will.

. . . While these negotiations with Ottawa are ongoing, our government will appoint, and I will chair, the ‘Alberta Next’ panel. This panel will be composed of some of our best and brightest judicial, academic and economic minds, to join with me in a series of in-person and online town halls to discuss Alberta’s future in Canada, and specifically, what next steps can we take as a province to better protect Alberta from any current or future hostile policies of the federal government.

. . . After the work of the panel is finished, it is likely we will place some of the more popular ideas discussed with the panel to a provincial referendum so all Albertans can vote on them sometime in 2026.

Well, Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, "jaw-jaw is better than war-war", but it sounds to me as though, if Alberta's grievances against Ottawa are as urgent as they seem to be, remedies other than jaw-jaw until sometime in 2026 (when there will maybe be some lind of potential vote on something or other) might be more appropriate. Trump's strategy with Carney strikes me as much more effective:

[Carney's] meeting with Trump is scheduled to take place Tuesday at the White House.

“I’m not sure what he wants to see me about, but I guess he wants to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday when asked what he expected from the meeting.

. . . Carney, in his first comments Friday following the election, said it was “important to distinguish want from reality,” adding that the upcoming talks would be difficult.

I've got to assume that when Carney mentions "reality", he's referring to the message Trudeau gave Trump at Mar-a-Lago, that any sort of trade reciprocity or increase in defense budget would destroy Canada as a nation. I've got to assume that Carney's ready to give the same answer to any proposals for equitable treatment to Premier Smith's Special Negotiating Team. As Trump told Time last week,

[T]he deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it. They don't have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries.

I continue to think, first, that any problem Trump has with Canada will be resolved much sooner than any problem Alberta has with Ottawa, and second, any resolution to the overall Canadian dilemma will make Premier Smith's plans for Alberta irrelevant fairly quickly.

Reopen Alcatraz? Why Not?

Yesterday, Trump posted on Truth Social,

REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. . . . That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.

According to the US Bureau of Prisons,

The U.S. Army used the island for more than 80 years--from 1850 until 1933, when the island was transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice for use by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Federal Government had decided to open a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons, and to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious about stopping the rampant crime of the 1920s and 1930s.

While several well-known criminals, such as Al Capone, George "Machine-Gun" Kelly, Alvin Karpis (the first "Public Enemy #1"), and Arthur "Doc" Barker did time on Alcatraz, most of the prisoners incarcerated there were not well-known gangsters, but prisoners who refused to conform to the rules and regulations at other Federal institutions, who were considered violent and dangerous, or who were considered escape risks.

. . . But while USP Alcatraz was not the "America's Devil's Island" that books and movies often portrayed, it was designed to be a prison system's prison.

. . . Once prison officials felt a man no longer posed a threat and could follow the rules (usually after an average of five years on Alcatraz), he could then be transferred back to another Federal prison to finish his sentence and be released.

On March 21, 1963, USP Alcatraz closed after 29 years of operation. . . . because the institution was too expensive to continue operating. An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs - Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other Federal prison (in 1959 the daily per capita cost at Alcatraz was $10.10 compared with $3.00 at USP Atlanta).

Although this account stresses the internal penological function Alcatraz served in the prison system, it nevertheless acknowledges that it was established in part "to show the law-abiding public that the Federal Government was serious about stopping the rampant crime of the 1920s and 1930s". Trump has an instinct for the public gesture, and his intent here is pretty clearly to reinstate the image of Alcatraz as the paradigmatic destination for notorious offenders, whether or not the Bureau of Prisons sees the internal need for such a thing in its operation.

I think Trump fully recognizes the tendency to romanticize criminality in certain segments of society -- look at how Luigi Mangione has been lionized for allegedly shooting an insurance executive in the back on a New York street, or the acclaim given to Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly facilitating the attempted escape of an illegal migrant from federal agents in the courthouse hallway. Even if the existing federal supermax facilities might be fully suited to the Bureau of Prisons's purpose, Trump sees an additional purpose in publicly stressing an intent to enforce the law.

After all, Alcatraz is an image that's had remarkable staying power in the public imagination, fed by Hollywood. According to the San Francisco Public Library,

Shortly after Alcatraz opened as a federal prison in 1934, its career as a setting for movies began. From "Alcatraz Island" (1937) through "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962) Hollywood depicted life on the isolated island. After the prison closed in 1963, a new era began. "Point Blank" (1967) was the first to film there, followed by such memorable titles as "The Enforcer" (1974) "Escape from Alcatraz" (1979), "The Rock" (1996) and "X-Men: The Last Stand" (2006).

This site lists 21 movies and 14 television shows that have featured Alcatraz. Trump is taking an existing paradigm and re-emphasizing it to stress a new determination to enforce the law. This is consistent with what I noted last month, that the Trump administration is restoring a J Edgar Hoover-style media presence for law enforcement.

There are already objections to the cost of reopening and operating Alcatraz:

Everything costs something. Alcatraz as a paradigm is priceless.

Getting Real About Canada

First, all the YouTubers were sure Poilievre was going to win the Canadian election. Once that didn't happen, they're all now sure this means Alberta is gonna have a plebiscite and vote to become independent, or join the US, or maybe become a territory on the way to becoming a state, or somethong like that. And after all, once Saskatchewan and Manitoba join Alberta, there are lots of conservatives in BC, right? Of course, nobody even knows what kind of supermajority Ottawa will want to see in such a vote, and right now, polling suggests there's not all that much support, but hey, it's gonna happen!

A post by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse suggests the whole Alberta question is irrelevant and goes into the real origin of Trump's "51st state" proposal:

Following the 2024 presidential election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Mar-a-Lago and said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government face reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse upon itself economically and cease to exist. In essence, in addition to the NATO defense shortfall, Canada cannot survive as a free and independent north American nation, without receiving all the one-way benefits from the U.S. economy.

To wit, President Trump then said, if Canada cannot survive in a balanced rules environment, including putting together their own military and defenses and meeting their NATO obligations, then Canada should become the 51st U.S state. It was following this meeting that President Trump started emphasizing this point and shocking everyone in the process. However, in the emotional reaction to Trump’s statements, no-one looked at the core issues outlined by Trudeau that framed President Trump’s opinion.

Representing Canada, Justin Trudeau was not expressing an unwillingness to comply with fairness and reciprocity in trade with the USA, what Trudeau was expressing was an inability to comply. Quite simply, after decades of shifting priorities, Canada no longer has the internal economic capability to comply with a fair-trade agreement (FTA). Trudeau was not lying, and President Trump understood the argument; hence his 51st state remarks.

This means that on many issues, negotiating with Canada, even using the threat of prohibitive tariffs, will have no effect. For instance, at the link,

If the NATO member states contribute more to their own defense, the U.S. can pull back spending and save Americans money. However, Canada is currently 26th in NATO funding, spending only 1.37% of their GDP on defense.

Canada would have to spend at least another $15 billion/yr on their defense programs in order to reach 2.0%. Justin Trudeau told President Trump that was an impossible goal given the nature of the Canadian political system, and the current size of their economy ($2.25 trillion).

If Alberta leaves Canada, some of the YouTubers do raise worthwhile questions. Would Alberta vote to become independent, vote to join the US, or defer the question to some later time? Under most scenarios, the question of whether Alberta would have its own military would come up. A potential condition of independence from Ottawa might be for Alberta to contract with Ottawa for military protection -- but that would be de facto something other than independence.

And maybe Alberta might decide money spent contracting with Ottawa might be better spent contracting with the US for the same thing. But in most such scenarios, this would make Ottawa even less able to meet its NATO commitment than it is now, which is a problem that Alberta won't solve whatever direction it takes.

By the same token, even if Alberta becomes independent, or even if it eventually becomes a US state, this makes the problem of the porous northern US border worse. Alberta would need to create a border protection agency de novo for the short term even as it transitioned to becoming a state or territory -- just glancing at the map, it might have 2000 miles of border to protect with both Canada and the US. If it becomes a US state or territory, there would be almost as much additional US border with Canada to protect.

This would be a non-trivial problem involving drug smuggling, illegal migration, and human trafficking. But as a US state or territory, this would create a whole new salient on the US border that would also be problematic from both a military and border enforcement perspective. All of this suggests to me that making Alberta alone -- or even Alberta with one or more other provinces -- part of the US would create more problems than it would solve for the US and weaken Canada further, running the greater risk of making it a failed state on our long northern border.

From Trump's perspective, the message Trudeau brought him in December, that any material change to current tariff or defense arrangements would make Canada a failed state, is a real conundrum. As Sundance points out at the link,

Canada is a NATO partner, Mexico is not. As President Trump affirmed to Justin Trudeau during the meeting, it would be unfair of President Trump to discuss NATO funding with the European Union, while Canada is one of the worst offenders. Trump is leveraging favorable trade terms and tariff relief with the EU member states, as a carrot to get them into compliance with the 2.0 to 2.5% spending requirement for their military.

Canada is expecting unique treatment as both a NATO member and as a trading partner via-a-vis both Europe and Mexico, but in Trumpian terms, they have nothong to offer in return. One thing we do know about Trump is that he prefers to negotiate with people who hve no alternatives. I suspect that he sees any independent move from Alberta to join the US as an unnecessary complication, and in fact a 51st state solution for all of Canada, or some variation on that, is most likely.

The Dark Ages Are Back!

I seem to be finding a lot of material at The Atlantic lately. Alan Lightman, who has been a professor at both Harvard and MIT and appears to be nothing if not a member of the academic establishment, has recently sounded the alarm: The Dark Ages Are Back.

Since April 22, more than 500 leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies have signed a statement protesting the unprecedented interference of the Trump administration into higher education, interference that included external oversight of admissions criteria, faculty hiring, accreditation, ideological capture, and, in some cases, curriculum. As the statement says, higher education in America is open to constructive reform. However, “we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.”

Especially targeted by the administration have been international students.

Here's where his argument starts to lose momentum. In this post, I looked at sources including the Chronicle of Higher Education to discover that universities love international students for the simple reason that 80 percent of them pay full freight -- no schoarships or other financial aid; if they borrow, they get the loans in their home countries,.

The percentage of foreign students at Harvard, as I pointed out in that post, is 27%. The percentage of international students at MIT, where Prof Lightman teaches, is even higher, at 29.1%. As I pointed out, these students tend to be the privileged scions of third-world ruling classes who attend elite US universities because the degrees are status symbols.

Harvard and MIT are happy to take their money, and it isn't a great leap to recognize that if those third-world rich kids want to harass Jews on campus in the name of supporting Palestine, neither Harvard nor MIT will get crosswise with them. And indeed, Prof Lightman will never intrude on the lives of those who learn, live, and work there, most espedcially the international students, without whom he and his colleagues would not have cushy paychecks.

The most recent interference from the Trump administration is Trump's threat to take away Harvard's tax exempt status:

pic.twitter.com/cjWgAaCP7v

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 2, 2025

It looks as if Trump actually has strong legal grounds for doing this:

It all goes back to 1983 and an 8-1 Supreme Court decision called Bob Jones University v. the United States. Back then, the Christian university didn’t allow interracial dating, which it considered a violation of biblical values. The IRS decided that since the United States was firmly opposed to racial discrimination as “public policy,” the school should lose its nonprofit status. The Supremes overwhelmingly agreed.

I've commented here that Harvard's undergraduate admissions policies are generally recognized to have originated as a way to limit Jews without having an explicit Jewish quota, and more recently, the same methodology has been used to limit Asians, while at the same time increasing the quotas for more favored groups. This practice was found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 2023. Prof Lightman blithely ignores this background, instead quoting a letter from MIT President Sally Kornbluth:

“To live up to our great mission, MIT is driven to pursue the highest standards of intellectual and creative excellence. That means we are, and must be, in the business of attracting and supporting exceptionally talented people, the kind of people with the drive, skill and daring to see, discover and invent things no one else can. To find those rare people, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe.” In the past, MIT and the many other institutions of higher learning in America have been Bacon’s “merchants of light.”

Wait a moment. In the past, MIT, Harvard, and the many other institutions of higher learning have systematically discriminated against Jews and Asians, who indeed are also exceptionally talented people. In fact, I strongly suspect that in any future class action suit against any selective university, discovery will show that the century-old discriminatory policies have persisted with only slight cosmetic changes. As I pointed out in my post at the link, in a recent Harvard entering class, roughly 80% were in non-merit categories including foreign students, legacies, and preppies.

And we need to recognize that the Harvard admissions paradigm has been generally used by all selective unversities, certainly all the Ivies. If the whole process is discriminatory, all such institutions risk losing their non-profit status. This in turn suggests that the traditional college admissions process itself will need to be scrapped and reinvented -- and this leaves aside the whole question of faculty hiring.

And we have the whole additional problem of the faculty career path through graduate school, in which legions of graduate students are prepared, at least in theory, for a steadily shrinking market of tenure-track positions in a highly corrupt hiring, promotion, and tenure process, which is already collapsing of its own weight. A serious look into this aspect of academic culture would upend the univerity system as we know it. Prof Lightman undermines his own argument in this passage:

Of course, the intellectual and creative freedom in America has enabled great productivity far beyond the precincts of science and technology. Exemplars include William James in philosophy and psychology, Toni Morrison in literature, Noam Chomsky in linguistics and cognitive science, Hannah Arendt in political theory, Martha Nussbaum in law and ethics, Margaret Mead in anthropology, W. E. B. Du Bois in sociology, John Rawls in political philosophy, Susan Sontag in cultural criticism, John Dewey in philosophy and education, and many, many more.

William James is a philosophical dead end. Toni Morrison? And I've had to study Noam Chomsky in grad school myself -- linguistics as a field is based on his theory that language evolved as a series of computer program-like modules, something for which there is no empirical evidence. Margaret Mead's work has been acknowledged as fabricated for generations. John Dewey is a joke. And these examples are apparently the best Prof Lightman can think of. But Harvard has produced many lesser luminaries, including Ted Kaczinksy, the Unibomber, whose personality is alleged to have been shaped by a Harvard undergraduate experimental program, or for that matter Timothy Leary or B F Skinner.

If Trump's effect is to cause a rethinking of higher education that eliminates the Harvard-MIT model, so much the better.

"The Following Is Not A Political Message"

As many know, one of my hobbies is model trains, and every now and then, I'm amused when the hobby world intersects with real life. Real life, of course, always wins, but hobby types, being hobbyists, are usually surprised and disappointed when this happens. It's a little sad when people in the hobby supply business come out on the losing end as well, but this is almost always because they seem to forget that business involves real life, not a hobby.

As the New York Times put it hehind a paywall this week, "Want to Escape the Financial News? Don't Try a Hobby." Somewhat belatedly, the model railroad industry has woken up to the fact that they outsourced the vast majority of their production to a small number of factories in China. Very little is actually known about these factories -- including how many there actually are and who's behind them.

I suspect that they operate on much the same basis as larger enterprises that make products like cell phones. Rush Limbaugh spelled out the basic problem back in 2011:

There’s been this myth that we’ve shipped all of our jobs overseas. Yeah, certain kinds of jobs have been shipped overseas. And one of the misnomers with manufacturing jobs lost, take a look, for example, at the Apple iPhone. Now, the Apple iPhone is assembled in China, but all the guts are not made in China. There are parts made in America, parts made in Switzerland, parts made in parts of Europe. They’re just all shipped over to Shenzhen at the manufacturing plant and they’re assembled there, but the whole phone is not ChiCom. It’s just assembled there.

. . . We start tariffs on Chinese imports, that just never works. It just never works. The market is speaking. The market here is speaking. If we, given current labor rates and everything else, an iPhone totally put together and made in this country would cost about $1800. Well, people aren’t gonna pay $1800 for an iPhone, and Apple knows it. But with all the parts made elsewhere, shipped to China and assembled over there, you can get an iPhone for 200 bucks now with Verizon thrown in as a carrier, in addition to AT&T.

El Rushbo said this in 2011, before probably even he thought of Trump taking up politics as a retirement activity, and all of a sudden, Trump 2.0 is starting tariffs on Chinese imports, and my guess is that it's going to work. The problem is that US businesses will be affected in various ways.

President Trump said this week that there may be less dolls for children for this year’s holiday season amid his tariff war, but the hit to retail shelf inventory is likely to spread across many shopping categories if there is no quick de-escalation between the U.S. and China in the trade war.

As early as July 4, many holiday sales promotions may start to look different, as small businesses that supply big box retail stores review product inventories and discount plans based on tariff economics. Business owners and supply chain executives tell CNBC the next 30 days are critical for trade deals that lift tariffs on China for the manufacturing orders to be placed and prepared to ship to replenish shelves.

The hobby industry is affected as much as any other. The link here gives one example of how almost any industry can be caught up:

Lauren Greenwood, co-founder & president of YouCopia, which makes storage containers, had moved its U.S. manufacturing to China over the past 15 years to meet the demand from retail giant Bed Bath and Beyond. She recently posted on LinkedIn about the temporary shuttering of the factory outside Nanjing, China, which manufactures the majority of YouCopia products, and opened in January 2025.

. . . “Our manufacturing has been down for three weeks,” said Greenwood. “Come August, there will be some items no longer available, and shelves will be bare.”

Looking at this solely as a business problem, continuity planning is a well-defined field:

Business continuity is an organization's ability to maintain or quickly resume acceptable levels of product or service delivery following a short-term event that disrupts normal operations. Examples of disruptions range from natural disasters to power outages.

. . . Business resilience encompasses crisis management and business continuity. It requires a response to all types of risk that an organization may face. An organization that is business resilient is essentially in a constant state of "expecting the unexpected." It means continuously preparing to meet disruptions head-on, including events of extended duration that may affect more than one facility or region.

While auditors and business managers have focused for the past 30-plus years on IT disaster recovery, a sudden tariff war -- or for that matter, a shooting war -- is precisely the sort of thing that a business owner like Ms Greenwood should have had at the back of her mind. What if the container ship carrying her latest shipment sinks? What if there's an earthquake in Nanjing that takes out her factory? And she's almost certainly the one expert on what would have to be done.

But apparently she never quite got around to doing this, even though it would be the sort of exercise she could do in her head while driving to work. And this is the sort of exercise that the model train manufacturers also don't seem ever to have undertaken. They're just looking at a situation where they'll be short of inventory by August and throwing up their hands. After all, if Trump hadn't raised the tariff, something else would have happened, a new epidemic, a natural disaster, a war with Taiwan, whatever.

A "coalition" -- that's what they call themselves, like something out of Star Wars -- has put together a remarkably clumsy YouTube presentation on their dilemma, linked above. The lead presenter, and apparently the driving force behind the effort, is Stacey Walthers Naffah, CEO of William K Walthers, Inc, a major model train manufacturer and distributor founded by her great-grandfather in the early 1930s. Ms Naffah, who has clearly had plastic surgery, has been making the media rounds talking in glib CEO-speak about the "challenges" facing her "team" as they "figure out a plan", which seems yet to materialize.

Either they don't have a PR adviser, or they've hired Jeff Bezos's guy. The presentation begins with the stark statement, "The following is not a political message". And I suppose it isn't, insofar as it isn't much of a message at all. The rebel coalition is just announcing that the sky is falling, and if you don't want the sky to fall, then -- what? It sorta-kinda emerges that they want model trains exempted from the 145% tariff, but they don't seem to have a plan to accomplish this.

They might at least have said, "write your congressman", or"call the White House", or even "call Howard Lutnick", but they don't even propose that. Or they might have said, "Here's what we're doing. We're meeting with Secretary Rubio and Secretary Lutnick on Tuesday, but meanwhile, we're . . ." but they aren't saying anything like that, either.

Stacey Walthers Naffah has an MBA. I asked the web, "should an MBA know about business continuity planning?" and got this answer:

Business continuity management (BCM) is an important part of MBA programs. It teaches future business leaders how to keep a company running during tough times. In the business world, BCM helps companies stay open when big problems happen.

MBA students learn how to plan to deal with risks and keep businesses working. These plans cover all parts of a company, from how it works to its money and people. The main goal is to make businesses strong enough to handle unexpected problems.

She seems to be the leader of the model train rebel coalition, but it sounds as if the only class she took seriously in business school was how to talk glib CEO-speak.

Yet again, we see why "playing with trains" is a synonym for feckless activity, up there with "wanking". I do note that a number of well-known names in the hobby industry did not appear in the video, which restores to at least some degee my faith in humanity.