Pakistan will now pay a price for harboring terrorists. The Trump administration has suspended aid to Pakistan. That means, as Jeff Smith points out, that the United States is no longer aiding a country committed to undermining its interests:
The anger and frustration expressed by the president is not only justified, it's long overdue. Through its support to the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and their militant allies, Pakistan has for over a decade consistently and critically undermined the U.S.-led effort to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan.
In efforts to persuade Islamabad to abandon this nefarious "double game," the U.S. government has deployed a constant stream of diplomatic and economic carrots—including $33 billion in aid and "reimbursements" since 2002—but virtually no sticks.
Predictably, each attempt has failed. It turns out it's quite difficult to change a country's cost-benefit calculation when you're unwilling to impose any costs.
Pakistan's double game, on the other hand, has brought it tangible benefits.
Islamabad has clear and consistent objectives in Afghanistan: It seeks a government in Kabul that is pliable, submissive, and hostile to India. Since the Afghan people—who are now deeply, understandably hostile to Pakistan and favorable toward India—will never vote such a government into power, the next best outcome for Pakistan is to ensure the government and the country are divided and unstable.
Not only has their quest for instability in Afghanistan been wildly successful, they've convinced America to foot much of the bill. [The Daily Signal]
Iran has misbehaved since the nuclear deal. And President Trump now has an opportunity to correct the Obama administration's blunder, writes Arthur Herman:
Instead of becoming a stabilizing force, Obama's Iranian partners have triggered instability and mayhem across the region, including sparking a proxy war with the Saudis over Yemen, stoking a vicious civil war in Syria, while also taking U.S. sailors hostage and giving the Taliban the weapons to kill Americans in Afghanistan—not to mention threatening Israel with annihilation.
With the revival of demonstrations in Iran, however, President Trump has an unprecedented opportunity to reset the U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic. He's already signaled his displeasure with the Iran nuclear deal; his tweets warning the mullahs that "the world is watching" are a further signal that he understands that the fate not only of Iran, but peace in the Middle East, depends on whether those demonstrators succeed or fail—and that the U.S. can act to help them succeed.
What steps can Trump take? First, reimpose all the sanctions against Iran that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal, especially against anyone that does business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the brutal elite mainstay of the Tehran regime.
Second, make it clear to the European Union and others who sit silent for fear their lucrative post-sanction deals with Tehran will fall through if the regime topples, that they will be held accountable to Washington and to history, if they stand by while one of the most despotic regimes in history once again crushes out the hopes of its citizens.
Third, show unflinching support for the demonstrators and show that America, and the world, are indeed watching and hails their effort to create a new life for themselves based on democracy and freedom. [Hudson Institute]
The Federal Register is now smaller than it has been in 24 years. A snapshot of the regulatory state from Clyde Wayne Crews:
The calendar year concluded with 61,950 pages in the Federal Register […] .
This is the lowest count since 1993's 61,166 pages. That was Bill Clinton's first year, and his own lowest-ever count.
A year ago, Obama set the all-time Federal Register page record with 95,894 pages. […]
After the National Archives processes all the blank pages and skips in the 2017 Federal Register, Trump's final count will ultimately be even lower.
Of course, the Federal Register may be a poor guide for regulation, but Washington doesn't go out of its way to honestly measure itself and disclose regulatory impact.
The "problem" of assessing magnitude is even worse this year, because many of Trump's "rules" are rules written to get rid of rules. […]
There has also been a major reduction in the number of rules and regulations under Trump.
Today the Federal Register closed out with 3,281 final rules within its pages.
This is the lowest count since records began being kept in the mid-1970s. [Competitive Enterprise Institute]
The sheeple have been herd. Oregonians gave the rest of the country a good guffaw this week when they took to Facebook to opine about a new state law allowing self-service gas stations in some areas of Oregon. In every other state except New Jersey, most people pump their own gas most of the time. But in Oregon, the pumping of gas by anybody other than a gas station attendant is a regarded as a public safety nightmare—at least according to those who weighed in. As Nick Sibilla points out, these are the attitudes that lead to bad regulations:
Yet as hysterical as those reactions are, unfortunately, they're actually not that far off from the state's official justifications for the ban. As part of the Oregon law, legislators listed a staggering 17 different reasons to defend the state's "prohibition on the self-service dispensing of Class 1 flammable liquids at retail." According to the legislature, pumping your own gas is a "health hazard," whereas requiring "properly trained" attendants to pump gas "reduces fire hazards." In addition, self-service stations expose customers to "the dangers of crime and slick surfaces," while leaving small children in the car to pay for gas "creates a dangerous situation."
Meanwhile, established businesses are more than happy to fuel and exploit public panic for their own gain. For instance, New Jersey's ban on self-service was heavily backed by the Gasoline Retailers Association, which faced greater competition from rival gas stations that allowed their customers to pump their own gas.
Since those newer stations had no need for attendants, they cut costs, and passed on the savings to consumers in the form of cheaper gas. That threatened the bottom line for incumbent gas station owners, who lobbied the state legislature to ban self-service in 1949. (Oregon's ban arrived two years later.) As Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine recounted, any feigned concerns for public safety were merely a "cover story" for something "a lot more devious and corrupt."
A combination of fear-mongering and rent-seeking is one reason why many regulations that seem so obviously silly or pointless persist. [Forbes]
Scandinavia and Great Britain offer lessons in welfare reform. Ryan Streeter writes:
For instance, to deal with declining labor force participation, Denmark eliminated permanent disability benefits for people under 40 and refashioned its system to make employment central. Sweden reformed its welfare system to focus on rapid transitions from unemployment to work. Their program lowers jobless assistance the longer one is on welfare. The Nordic model is more focused on eliminating reasons not to work such as caregiving or lack of proper training than providing income replacement.
Similarly, the British government combined six welfare programs with varying requirements into a single "universal credit." The benefit is based on a sliding scale and decreases as a recipient's earnings increase, replacing several differing formulas for phasing out of welfare programs with one. An evaluation of the new program, which encourages work, found that 86 percent of claimants were trying to increase their work hours and 77 percent were trying to earn more, compared to 38 percent and 55 percent, respectively, under the previous system. [American Enterprise Institute]
-
Comments
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment, just make sure they are not vulgar or they will be removed.