Housing Policy

With all the talk about mortgage rules, it was left to Colm McCarthy in yesterday's Sunday Independent to make the most important point of all: the failure of our housing policy is not down to the Central Bank but to the Department of the Environment, the planning authorities and their political masters. Although the Central Bank deserves criticism for the runaway chaos of the 00s, the principal failure down through the decades has been by the political system. As McCarthy said, housing policy is the responsibility of the Government, not of the Central Bank, but because of our dysfunctional political system the Central Bank has been asked to do the heavy lifting. It can't.

When was the last time the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Housing or any Minister told the public that the price of houses should remain stable in real terms? When have Ministers spoken about the need for housing policy to be set in a wider context of economic and social development, including climate change? When have Ministers told the public that urban sprawl and the waste of good farm land has to be brought to an end and that people will have to live in cities (not commute every morning from ever expanding suburbs). The energy cost, the carbon footprint and the damage done to the fabric of cities (not to mention the quality of life of commuters) demands a major change of approach.

The Irish approach to housing is well captured by the ESB advertisement about the young man heading home for Christmas, bring greeted at the bus station by his father and being driven home to his house in the countryside to be greeted by his mother. It is an experience many people can relate to but it is a lifestyle that will have to change. The idea that work and home should be in different places (even if the advertisement is probably about a student) must be challenged. The majority of the population will have to adjust to living in urban areas within walking or cycling distance of their place of work, or, at worst, a short journey by public transport from within the town or city limits. Children should walk to school or at best go by school bus. Parents should be strongly discouraged or, if necessary, forbidden by law to bring children to school by car (especially by SUV!).

Planning permission should be closely linked to issues of density, public transport, schools and other factors. The question of price controls will have to be considered, if only to deal with the problems of development. Whereas in the past a "good" area of a town or city was home to a wide range of middle class professions and activities, nowadays, in effect, only doctors, lawyers, accountants and financial services personnel can afford to live in certain areas and send their children to the perceived top schools. This not only creates resentment among, say, senior public servants and teachers it also discourages people from choosing a career in the public service or teaching. That, in turn, impacts on economic and social development in two ways: we will have too many doctors, lawyers, etc. (not all of them suited to those professions) and not enough good public servants, teachers, etc.

House prices and the belief throughout Irish society that housing is the route to (unearned) wealth is a deeply ingrained cultural trait in what is a very greedy society and it will not be easy to change. Not surprisingly, public representatives are not prepared to address the greed factor but they will have to sooner or later. House prices have had a huge impact on other areas of public policy, including pay demands and the capacity of the State to provide much needed services. The high cost of living is a result of the greedy nature of Irish society, which won't be successfully tackled until we have a functioning housing policy. Changing cultural habits like greed are of course a lot more difficult to effect than changing mortgage rules but because we have 100 TDs too many the political class won't even try. The problems are mounting up, however, right across virtually every area of public policy and the common denominator - the dysfunctional political system, which needs massive pruning - will have to be addressed.

Why Trump?

There is a great deal more to be said about the election and it will be a very long time before the fallout is complete. There are going to be consequences on many levels but the most urgent one has to be the economy. The media on this side of the Atlantic said that HC’s campaign was slick and that Trump’s gallop through some of the “marginal constituencies” like Pennsylvania in the last few days before the election was a sign of desperation. The opposite seems to have been the case. HC’s campaign appears to have been driven by identity politics, by the type of people who believe the main subject for discussion on university campuses should be genderless bathrooms, whereas Trump seems to have had a well organized campaign that listened to what ordinary citizens were saying. If HC had had any sense at all she would have broadly endorsed Trump’s approach to trade and globalization (not that many people would have believed her). If the Democratic Party does not move immediately to do so now (along the lies of Bernie Sanders) it could well be toast. There is room for a genuine left of centre party to replace the Democrats and to focus on the issues of concern to tens of millions of ordinary Americans. 

Politics is all about the haves and the havenots. The haves are always well represented. The havenots don’t usually get much of a look in but when the party that is supposed to represent them goes farther to the right than the candidate of the haves what else are the voters to do? You could argue that the US empire will have to be brought to an end before US politics can be reformed but assuming that reform is possible within the imperial structure the Democrats have to rediscover what a left of centre political party is about: ensuring that ordinary citizens have a decent job, a decent standard of living, decent healthcare, decent unemployment benefit when out of work, decent housing and so on. Trump took that ground, and in my view honestly so. The same thing happened in 1860 when Lincoln stole the progressive ground of the anti-slavery movement admittedly because the Republican Party wanted strong tariffs in the North and the Southern States didn’t so there was a natural alliance between the various wings of the Republican party that brought about the end of slavery. Nevertheless, Lincoln’s abhorrence of slavery was genuine and the honour of destroying slavery and the rotten social and economic system that underpinned it and benefited from it fell to the Republican Party. The same might happen in relation to excessive globalization. If Bernie Sanders had been selected by the Democrats he would have beaten Trump. He might indeed have beaten Trump and Clinton if he had opted to run. 

I’m not too bothered about Trump’s boorish behaviour. My guess is that he calculated that the only way he could channel the anger into votes was by turning up the volume. This was no ordinary election and if the US elite does not take heed of what happened who knows what will happen in the future. Trump also realized that after fifty years of PC (much of it justified certainly but it had gone way off the rails with the gender stuff and the bathrooms and university students wanting safe rooms) it was necessary to challenge it and challenge it aggressively. He was clearly right on both counts although it was ugly. It will now be up to him to turn down the volume.

There was a good article on the election in the NYT The End of Identity Liberalism by Mark Lilla, who is essentially saying that gender stuff and bathroom stuff has its place but front and centre: no. Anyone with any cop-on has been saying this right through the campaign but not HC’s people. Apparently, Bill Clinton tried to get this across to them but was told to button it. Apparently, he also told them not to ignore the Catholic vote but the latent anti-Catholicism of HC, a good WASP, came through. In many ways it was the mirror image of Trump’s attack on PC. Clinton and her people felt that they had a licence for good old fashioned Catholic-bashing dressed up as something else. They forgot that good old-fashioned Catholics have votes. HC’s arrogance and sense of entitlement to the Presidency let her down and her friends in the media, who should have warned her, didn’t.

Trump’s election will have an impact on feminism. There is now a divide between those who argue for women’s rights and those who argued that HC had a right to power because she is a woman. That was quite a leap for the sisterhood to make and it was important that she lose on that ground alone. If the sisterhood splits big time over this I would expect “approved” opinions about abortion among right-on types to start diverging too.

It remains to be seen if the military industrial complex and the secret state prevent Trump from making significant changes to US war policy, which, again, I suspect he genuinely wants to make. I suspect that he is opposed to the elite’s policy of perpetual war for perpetual profits for the arms industry (with the morons in the State Department and the satellite think tanks going along with them). It would be a brave man who would predict success for Trump there.

I sent a tweet to the actor who lectured Pence after a theatre performance asking the actor, Dixon, if he had lectured HC in the same patronizing way about her destabilizing of Libya. No response needless to say but I see some tweets coming through about Dixon urging black guys to have sex with white women on Paddy’s Day. If you are going to lecture the Vice President Elect you would be well to have a clean sheet yourself as, if you don’t, someone will dig up the dirt. That is what has happened to Dixon. I don’t expect the New York Times to lecture Dixon about his attitude to white women or a file to be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (as we say) but Dixon, who is an eejit, might come to regret his fifteen minutes of fame.

The Donald trumps Brexit

The election count was a close replica of Brexit night although it went on longer. The similarities indeed were uncanny. The "Sunderland" of last night was Ohio.Trump's win there suggested that a Trump victory was possible. Had he won Virginia as well, which he almost did, I would have got to bed a lot sooner than 7am! As it was, the US networks waited two hours or more to move Trump's electoral college votes from 244 to the 270s (bar one vote to 245). One doesn't want to get paranoid but 99% of the votes had been counted in Pennsylvania, I think, with Trump in the lead (and therefore over the 270 number) but, even though the New York Times had called it, the networks refused to do so for about two hours. I suspect that if Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had gone to Hilary Clinton the networks would have called the results in short order. Which goes to show that Trump's allegations of chicanery might not necessarily have been completely wide of the mark. There were postal votes to be counted in Pennsylvania (by hand, apparently, as opposed to electronically in some other states) but that doesn't explain the delay. I gather Trump was making his victory speech when Pennsylvania or Wisconsin came through and brought him over the top. He had clearly got fed up waiting for the networks.

Brexit is restated, confirmed, underlined and strengthened by Donald Trump's victory, and the euro is next. TTIP is for the bin and the future of the EU itself and NATO are now up in the air. It's impossible just now to take it all in or to know where the US and the world will go from here. The US Presidency is a far weaker institution than we think because of the separation of powers, and Donald Trump is as despised by almost as many Republican senators and Congressmen as Clinton, but like Brexit it's the vote that counts. For the second time in just over six months the people have misbehaved and refused to do as they were told. I don't say that the people are always right but they are always sovereign. It will take this victory to bring home to the Remainers in the UK that Brexit means Brexit.

It is no coincidence that the "revolution" bringing about the end of the post WW2 world began in the UK and the US (leaving aside the collapse of the USSR and communism). The UK and the US created the Western dimension of the post war world. They also pushed more than anyone else (with our elite following them without giving it a second thought) for a world of excessive globalization, including in the financial services area. The Big Bang in the UK in 1985 and Larry Summers' disastrous legislation in the US in the 1990s set the scene for the loss of any control of capital movements, which underlie a lot of the problems since. The mad euro experiment of course deserves to be up there also, which is why the euro will be next to feel the wind of change. NAFTA contributed significantly to Trump's victory. I was exchanging tweets at around 6am with a well known economist who felt that globalization had its merits but said that "the corporate interests unchecked fest at society's expense is the problem". Exactly. Where to draw the line between free trade and the rights and responsibilities of governments to govern their territories and protect the interests of their people is the issue: the near total stakeholder capture of Western governments (in this case the US) by global interests is the underlying reason for Donald Trump's victory.

The number crunchers of course were at it all night. More women voted for Donald Trump than were expected to and fewer Latinos voted for Hilary Clinton than we were told was the case. (I'm not surprised in either case. Why would women vote for somebody shady just because she is a woman or Latinos not be able to understand that states must have borders and rules about immigration?) There is no doubt that playing the hyphenated game was a bad tactic for Hilary Clinton. Truth to tell, she might have had no choice but some of her rallies gave the impression of a Tree Huggers for Clinton event. The Democratic Party needs to get away from giving the impression that it is the hyphenated Americans party and get back to being a left of centre party, e.g. ditch NAFTA. (Donald Trump should seek to reverse the increasing balkanization of the US. The most interesting Americans I've ever met have been ... Americans. Hyphenated Americans tend to be less interesting.) It will be interesting to see if the Democrats work that out. I enjoyed the piece by Brian Boyd in Tuesday's Irish Times in which he pointed out that seeking support from rock stars and the like doesn't work. (Speaking of celebrities, where has Bono been? How have we been so lucky!) The article refers to one individual, who, in 2004, particularly resented the fact that Bruce Springsteen, whom the individual correctly described as a song and dance man, urged people to vote for Kerry in that year's Presidential election. I love the Boss and he was right on that occasion but perhaps another consequence of the revolution is that the age of celebrity might be coming to an end. Donald Trump was one but the end of celebrity could be one of the unintended consequences of his victory.

The media has been the stand-out performer in this campaign but for all the wrong reasons. With some fine exceptions, they did everything they could to create the impression that Hilary Clinton was the better candidate and was home and hosed. I don't necessarily blame the polling companies. I can understand how people would be reluctant to say how they intended to vote. No doubt many people kept their heads down at work and among their friends and then quietly voted for Donald Trump. The Clintons' checkered history finally caught up with them. The media did everything they could to down play the pay-for-play strategy of the Clintons but they couldn't bury it. I suspect, however, that the debates ultimately turned the table. I saw part of the first one and all of the second and third ones. Donald Trump improved with every debate while Hilary Clinton failed to get her vision across (although she did to the global elite and the media, who understood that she was their woman). I noticed, particularly after the third debate, that good journalists could not run away from their consciences and started, ever so gingerly, to point out that Donald Trump was developing into something but that Hilary Clinton was standing still. I thought Donald Trump had left it too late to begin to display the necessary political skills but he hadn't. He had to trod a fine line between the angry revolutionary and behaving like a civilized human being. I thought he had got the balance wrong but he obviously hadn't.

The Canadian immigration website crashed during election night. Shades of UK citizens looking for Irish passports after the Brexit referendum. Silly.

It will obviously take some months to see how Donald Trump seeks to turn his victory into significant new policy directions. My first reaction is to breathe a sigh of relief that the world won't be a heap of ashes four years from now. The risk of nuclear war with Russia had Hilary Clinton won would have been very high. Assuming Donald Trump can get the support of the Congress for his measures (which is a huge assumption), if he reduces US corporation tax to 15% that will have a huge impact on the US and global economy. It will oblige this state to move away from Whitaker Economics. I don't underestimate the challenge involved but we have to face the future as well. I hope Donald Trump will instigate a massive renewal of US infrastructure and he should tackle education as well. Hopefully, he will also restructure the Supreme Court and that important social issues like abortion and surrogacy will be addressed. And I hope, he finds a way of keeping the Second Amendment while tackling the US gun culture that has always been a feature of US society but particularly since the end of the US Civil War. Sales of post Civil War surplus weapons gave that culture a boost from which US society has never recovered.

Donald Trump's Cabinet appointments will tell us a lot about his plans for the Presidency. Will he appoint heavy hitters to the economic ministries (and get rid of Janet Yellen, if he can) and lesser figures to State and Defence? Having a businessman in the White House is a huge plus. Will he challenge the military industrial complex, which is consuming (morality aside) far too many resources, resources that the US could spare in the 1950s-1970s but not today? Will he go for the best Cabinet he can and forget the gender balance/must have some gays nonsense?

Clinton V Trump

Jeremy Paxman said on the Late Late Show on Friday night that if he had a vote he would vote for Clinton but that both candidates were awful. He said that Clinton had failed to communicate her vision for America. She is a bore, certainly, like Michael Dukakis or Walter Mondale, but it is clear that she is the insider candidate, the candidate of Wall Street, the MI complex and the secret state. The elite know she is their woman – she has very successfully communicated that to them. She is also the candidate of sleaze and her presidency will be immersed in sleaze and scandal from day one, indeed even before she assumes office. What people haven’t realized is that sleaze doesn’t matter to the elite as long as their position is secured by every incoming president. The people don’t like it but they don’t matter unless of course we get another Brexit-type result. The extent to which the elite are drifting away from the people (and couldn’t care less about their obligations as an elite) is one of the emerging features of 21st century politics. The similarities with France in 1789 are there to be seen .... (We of course are an outlier when it comes to elites ignoring democracy with the results of the Nice 1 and Lisbon 1 referenda having been rejected by the State ....)

 

I listened to a very sane, calm, rational Irish-American called Michael Ryan talking to Sean O’Rourke on RTE on Thursday. Ryan is the editorial writer for an Atlanta newspaper, which is plumping for Trump. He started off by saying that Trump’s behaviour had been awful and had made it very difficult for decent people to vote for him, which is true. Then he went on to say that Trump had improved considerably in recent weeks, which is also true. (I watched part of the first presidential debate and all of the second and third debates. The improvement in Trump’s performance in the second debate over the first and in the third over the second was considerable.) He spoke about Trump displaying a measure of self-discipline in recent weeks. Indeed, if Trump had reached the stage of his political development in September that he has now reached he would be home and hosed. He said that Trump had made some important and well crafted speeches in recent weeks and was developing into a person of substance. True. Ryan’s newspaper has met Trump. The private man, it seems, is different from the public Trump. So Ryan said anyway. The general impression (spread by the media) is that only red necks from the Appalachian mountains and members of the Ku Klux Klan will vote for Trump but in point of fact tens of millions of people who can read and write will also vote for him. Most will hold their noises while doing so but America is electing a president not a marriage guidance counsellor.

 

On the other side, Ryan spoke about the sleaze that is the Clinton industry, as you might call it. (Tens of millions of people won’t vote for her because they can read and write.) It is sad that the dying days of the Obama administration are a reminder of the Nixon Presidency but I’m not surprised. Obama (who was described by an ex-CIA guy, who spoke at a public meeting in Dublin on Tuesday, as a man who lost his bxxls on Inauguration Day eight years ago somewhere between the Capitol and the WH except for the stand he took on Iran) threw in the towel on his presidency a long time ago.  You could see that listening to (as opposed to watching) the speech he made in N.Carolina the other day where he told the audience that he didn’t want to put pressure on them but that the future of the world depended on their vote. He was practically laughing and was not being in any way serious. Even RTE, strong supporters of Clinton, thought Obama was taking hyperbole to new heights or lows. The ex-CIA guy indicated (from something he had heard second hand) that Obama feared assassination. Maybe so, maybe not but Obama is smart enough to know that any president who seriously challenges the secret state is taking a risk. Having opted out a long time ago he probably couldn’t care less that HC’s behaviour at the State Department or that the efforts of the Justice Department to prevent the FBI bringing her to justice bear a striking similarity to the Nixon administration. There is a realistic chance of criminal charges being laid against HC unless Obama pardons her after 8th November, which I think he will. Whether he is worried about his reputation or not, he can’t have his successor doing the perp walk from the Oval Office to a court! Ryan said that there is civil war within the FBI over HC’s behaviour. She is still the favourite but Ryan thought that the ground was shifting beneath her feet. It is not that the opinion polls are lying but they are not keeping up with the pace of events. (Opinion polls are becoming less and less reliable anyway for all sorts of reasons mostly to do with the way society is changing.)

 

So, if there is any justice in this world Trump will win. The most important area is war and peace. Friday’s Irish Independent reported that a former chief of the imperial general staff in Britain thinks that the world would be safer under Trump than Clinton. Right again: that one is a no brainer. Trump, if elected, would be the first president in my lifetime who knew anything about business, something the WH needs. Trump’s understanding of the self-destructive nature of globalization for the developed world and the fact that it has gone too far is one of the best features of his campaign, and he has clearly succeeded in getting that view across. (Channel 4’s main evening news one day last week came from an empty factory in Detroit, the biggest empty factory in the world or some such. In spite of themselves, journalists with integrity can’t help picking up the good points in the Trump campaign.) Trump would also, I think, upend Roe V Wade and, as he said in the third debate, ensure that state legislatures did their duty and addressed the abortion issue. Given that there have been something like one billion abortions since, say, 1970 it is time that the slaughter of the innocents was stopped. I think his presidency could be a turning point on that issue, if he were to succeed in forcing the issue back to state legislatures. I’m not convinced that legislatures when confronted with the one billion figure will casually let that continue. Trump supports the Second Amendment but hasn't allowed himself to be trapped into a refusal to interpret it in a rational way.

 

I’m not suggesting that Trump would do all or anything that he says he would do, if elected, but if were to win, the vote would be what counts. If he seriously attempted to challenge the elite, the secret state would stop him (until eventually the crowd gathered around the Bastille) but might think twice before removing him as they did JFK. Kennedy was an Irish Catholic despised by millions of Americans (many of whom, or their descendants, will vote for Trump, it is true) plus the manner in which he won the election was questionable. So the secret state felt safe enough in removing him. If Trump, who is a WASP, were to win without having to go the chads route to the Supreme Court the secret state would certainly attempt to stop him but would hopefully think twice before going for the sudden removal option.