Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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Dec. 30
The Washington Post on the presidency, life and legacy of Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter’s presidency began with a simple act meant to signal a new relationship between the people and their government: He and his wife, Rosalynn, got out of their limousine and walked a short part of the inaugural parade route, hand in hand. His time in office ended four years later with a spiteful gesture by the revolutionary government of Iran, which released 52 American hostages it had held for 444 days — but only when Mr. Carter was out of office, and at the very moment when his triumphant successor was delivering his inaugural address.
It was the final insult of Mr. Carter’s term in office and the end of what was widely regarded, according to much commentary and a fair swath of public opinion, as a “failed” presidency. But was his presidency, which ended 43 years before his death Sunday at age 100, really a failed one? It’s not easy to say just what constitutes failure in a presidency: war, economic disruption that goes on for years, civil conflict? Some highly regarded presidents saw all these things on their watches.
It’s obvious that much went badly during Mr. Carter’s time in the White House. To some extent, he was overtaken by events that had been set in motion well before he took office. The seething resentment among many Iranians that led to the hostage crisis dated back at least a quarter-century. The economic problems that dogged the administration were a continuation of trends that had been developing through two or three administrations, and they were greatly exacerbated by the oil crisis triggered by Iran’s revolution. The general dismay with and alienation from government could be, and generally were, seen as in large part products of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.
In fact, there were solid and lasting accomplishments by the Carter administration. The Camp David agreement, which has brought a long if uneasy peace to what was the most dangerous conflict point in the Middle East, was his administration’s greatest foreign policy achievement. It’s hard to see how the accord between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin could have been reached without Mr. Carter’s constant presence during the talks and careful attention to the needs of the two principals.
There was no great political benefit to be had in that endeavor, and there was even less in another: the treaties that changed the status of the Panama Canal Zone and ended a number of American prerogatives there. It wasn’t a popular action, but Mr. Carter pursued it to completion because he thought it the most sensible and fair solution to a problem that threatened to become worse over time as Panamanian politicians demanded change and fomented discontent in a sensitive area.
Nor was Mr. Carter’s advocacy of human rights as an essential element of American foreign policy particularly politic. In practice, of course, he found that reconciling such high ideals with U.S. interests abroad was no simple matter: He faced many of the same contradictions as presidents before and after him, and ended — in both his presidency and his post-presidential travels — feeling the need to deal with some pretty unsavory leaders.
Some of his domestic achievements continue to reverberate. Mr. Carter did more than all previous presidents combined to diversify the federal judiciary, appointing 57 non-White people and 41 women to the bench. He also pushed through a 1978 law deregulating the airline industry and boosting competition, which made fares more affordable and increased the number of routes offered.
Perhaps the most damage was done to his presidency and his reelection chances by the combination of economic stagnation and inflation, exacerbated by a continuing energy crisis. His appointment, late in his term, of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve was seen as essential to the economic turnaround eventually brought about by Mr. Volcker’s measures over eight years during the Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations — albeit at the cost of a recession that devastated many people’s lives.
Many of Mr. Carter’s mistakes were matters of style and temperament. He didn’t get along well with the press, and he paid for it; much of the mockery directed at him seems in retrospect overdone. But he contributed to it with a tendency sometimes to overmanage, by misreading how some of his actions would be perceived — as in his demanding resignations from his Cabinet at the height of his troubles — and a strain of what was often seen as self-righteousness, expressed at times in a scolding tone in his public discourse. Characteristically, Mr. Carter would on occasion frankly acknowledge his shortcomings in this regard.
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Dec. 30
The Wall Street Journal on the blue state homeless boom
In case you missed last Friday’s pre-holiday news dump, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that homelessness this year hit a record. Add this to President Biden’s regrettable legacies, though it’s notable that progressive states accounted for most of the increase.
HUD’s annual point-in-time survey found that the number of homeless increased 18% this year and 36% since 2019. Local governments and nonprofits in January counted some 771,480 living in public spaces, shelters or other temporary government-funded housing. Yet the report essentially absolves federal policies of blame.
The agency admits what it calls a “national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households”—as if these had nothing to do with the trillions of dollars the feds doled out during the pandemic and then on Mr. Biden’s watch. HUD also faults “the persisting effects of systemic racism,” “additional public health crises” and natural disasters.
HUD places especially heavy blame on the expiration of pandemic programs, including Democrats’ expanded child tax credit and Mr. Biden’s illegal eviction moratorium. Landlords did increase rents to compensate for tenants who didn’t pay under the eviction ban. But the end of souped-up Covid-era welfare can’t explain why there are so many more homeless now than before the pandemic.
One culprit is a surge in migration. New York City told HUD that migrant households accounted for nearly 88% of its increase in homeless living in shelters this year. Chicago reported “that an influx of new arrivals,” mostly migrants bused and flown from other states, “accounted for more than 13,600 people in emergency shelters.”
While migrants have also flooded into Florida and Texas, these states seem to have absorbed them far better. Since 2019 the number of homeless has soared in Illinois (15,633), California (35,806) and New York (65,928), versus Texas (2,139) and Florida (3,034). Higher housing costs and unemployment in progressive states make it more difficult for migrants to support themselves.
Restrictive zoning and environmental regulations reduce housing supply and drive up prices. Compare the number of new housing permits issued last year in Texas (232,373) and Florida (193,788), versus California (117,760), New York (48,807) and Illinois (16,863).
New York City’s “right to shelter” policy also encourages migrants to take advantage of government-supported housing, including hotels in midtown Manhattan. But most migrants who can’t find work and housing eventually move to places where they can.
Most of the increase in what HUD calls “chronic homelessness” owes to mental illness and drug abuse, which the report fails to mention, if you can believe it. This is obvious to anyone who walks past an urban homeless encampment, or for that matter any street in certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
Progressives ignore such clear social ills and instead call for more spending on low-income housing. But such “housing first” policies have failed, as demonstrated by the rising number of homeless in progressive states.
HUD spends $72 billion a year, mostly on affordable housing, and progressive states spend billions more each year. California spent $24 billion to reduce homelessness in the last five years, but there are more homeless. The Administration even granted California a waiver to use federal Medicaid funds to help the homeless obtain housing. Meantime, drug rehab centers in the state are closing because of inadequate government reimbursements.
Florida and Texas have taken a more practical and effective approach. They prosecute drug possession and public disorderly conduct as a lever to induce addicts and the mentally ill into treatment as an alternative to jail. This is more humane than leaving the homeless to their own vices on the streets. Alas, progressives prefer the latter.
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Dec. 29
The Los Angeles Times gives five reasons to keep the federal tax credit for EVs
President-elect Donald Trump‘s transition team is planning to eliminate a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit that helps consumers afford clean cars while supporting the U.S. auto industry.
Combined with his pledge to roll back vehicle emissions standards that require automakers to sell more electric vehicles, ending the credit would be a big step backward for clean air, the climate, consumers, manufacturing employment and the U.S. economy.
Here are five reasons why the EV tax credit is worth keeping, and why scrapping it would be a counterproductive mistake.
Ending the EV tax credit will raise consumer costs.
EVs are growing in popularity worldwide, but most Americans need help affording plug-in vehicles because they still cost more, on average, than their gas-fueled counterparts. That’s the whole idea behind the tax credit, which allows consumers to claim up to $7,500 to offset the purchase price.
The policy is working, making EVs more affordable and competitive with gas-fueled models, especially accounting for the many thousands of dollars EV owners save over the lifetime of their vehicles from lower fuel and maintenance costs.
President Biden expanded the program by adding a $4,000 tax credit for the purchase of a used electric vehicle. Since Jan. 1, buyers have also been able to claim the credit at the time of sale and use it toward their purchase instead of waiting until they file their taxes. Consumers saved over $600 million in just the first three months of the year, an average of $6,900 per vehicle, according to the Treasury Department. Electric cars shouldn’t be a luxury available only to the wealthy. Keeping the tax credit in place will help these clean, low-maintenance vehicles get within reach of more American families.
Tax incentives are a bipartisan solution.
Presidents of both parties have for nearly two decades supported federal incentives for cleaner vehicles. The tax credit was established in 2005 under George W. Bush as a $3,400 incentive to help offset the purchase of a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle. In 2008 Bush signed legislation that applied it to plug-in vehicles and expanded the credit to up to $7,500.
The credit continued under President Obama and President Trump’s first term, during which it grew in popularity every year, saving consumers and businesses about $5 billion. The credit got a major expansion with the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, and continuing it will save consumers money while helping support good-paying American auto industry jobs.
The EV credit supports American jobs.
The auto industry is a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, providing more than 1 million jobs, and its strength is increasingly dependent on its success in making the global transition from its gas-fueled past to an electric-powered future.
The U.S. auto industry wants to keep the consumer EV tax credit, and automakers don’t want the incoming Trump administration to scrap federal rules requiring them to sell more EVs. They have understandably cited the need for stability and predictability for the industry, as well as a desire to remain competitive and recoup hundreds of billions of investment in the transition to EVs.
Ending the EV tax credit would also hurt American manufacturing. When the credit was expanded under the Inflation Reduction Act, new rules were also added to restrict eligibility to vehicles that are assembled in North America and meet other restrictions on the sourcing of battery parts and crucial minerals. The aim was to encourage domestic production and reduce the supply chain’s dependence on China. This is no time to halt policies that give American workers a shot at a better future.
Ending the credit hurts America’s competitiveness.
Electric vehicles are the future, and that is a reality U.S. automakers are planning for and making huge investments in, including more than $100 billion in new electric vehicle factories and battery plants. But China and other competitors are pouring far more resources into that transition. Automakers, including Ford and General Motors, have set clear goals to phase out gas-fueled cars and transition to all-electric fleets. But ending the policies that support that transition will only cede ground to China, Europe and other rivals.
Trump’s richest supporter and associate, Elon Musk, has voiced support for ending the EV tax credits, despite owning Tesla, because while it might hurt his business, it would hurt his competitors more. But our nation’s economic future depends on a healthy, robust market for American-made EVs, with diverse offerings at affordable price points. It would be unwise to undermine that.
A less competitive U.S. electric vehicle sector will also make the country more dependent on foreign oil. Oil companies, which supported Trump’s reelection (he advanced a pro-fossil-fuel agenda during his first term), would be the primary beneficiaries of rolling back pro-EV policies, keeping consumers tied to Big Oil and captive to their volatile gas prices.
We need EVs to fight global warming.
The most important reason for keeping the tax credit, of course, is that it helps the transition to pollution-free vehicles. Transportation is the nation’s largest source of planet-warming pollution, and we can’t effectively fight climate change without slashing emissions that are causing storms, wildfires, heat waves and droughts to worsen.
Even Trump — who has dismissedglobal warming as a “hoax” and attacked EVs by stoking baseless consumer fears during his campaign — should be able to see that the future is electric and that American businesses, consumers and workers can either stake out a place in that future or be left behind.
ONLINE: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-12-29/keep-bipartisan-federal-electric-vehicle-tax-credit
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Dec. 27
The Guardian on arms control and the risks of nuclear proliferation
Next November marks 40 years since the US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. The statement was striking – not least because their militaries were pouring billions into preparing for an unwinnable conflict.
A year later, at Reykjavik, the two came tantalisingly close to eliminating nuclear weapons entirely. That historic chance slipped away over Reagan’s insistence on his unproven “Star Wars” missile defence system. The moment passed, but its lesson endures: disarmament demands courage – and compromise.
The summit proved a turning point in the cold war. Arms control brought down the number of nuclear weapons held by the two countries from 60,000 to roughly 11,000 today. The most recent new strategic arms reduction treaty (New Start), signed in 2010, capped deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 each. In retrospect, that was a false dawn in nuclear diplomacy. Since George W Bush withdrew the US from the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Moscow in 2002, the risk of a return to an all-out arms race has grown.
On 20 January 2025, Donald Trump will once again hold the keys to a planet-ending arsenal. Mr Trump’s capricious personality sheds new light on an old question: how much of the terrible responsibility to inflict large-scale nuclear destruction should be invested in a single person? He has called the transfer of authority “a very sobering moment” and “very, very scary”. Reassuring words – until one remembers that he also reportedly wondered: “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?” Presidential sole authority rightly ensures civilian control over nuclear weapons. But why concentrate such power in just one civilian’s hands?
Close to apocalypse
Without bold action, New Start, the last safeguard of nuclear arms moderation, will expire in February 2026. Mr Trump admires strongmen like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has recklessly threatened nuclear strikes and hinted at restarting tests during the Ukraine war. But it would be a catastrophic mistake if the pair decided not to exercise self-restraint. It would mean that for the first time in more than 50 years, the US and Russia – holders of 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons – could begin an unconstrained arms race. That dismal decision would send a message to other states, notably China, further encouraging their buildup of nuclear stockpiles.
Deterrence is not the only way to think about nuclear weapons. For decades, a conflict involving them has been a byword for Armageddon. The fearful legacy of “the bomb” can be felt from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the testing grounds still contaminated by nuclear fallout decades later. Such sentiment led to Barack Obama, in 2009, advocating a hopeful vision of a nuclear-free world. His speech inspired a coalition of activists, diplomats and developing nations determined to force a global reckoning. Their resistance to the conventional wisdom that nuclear disarmament is unrealistic bore fruit with the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, adopted by 122 countries at the UN in 2017. Its message: the only way to ensure nuclear weapons are never used again is to do away with them entirely.
The treaty, championed by the Nobel prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was a triumph over superpower diplomacy that had long hindered reviews of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Nuclear-armed states are sceptical, if not scornful. But their resistance does not diminish the importance of the 2017 UN vote. It represents not only a moral and legal challenge to the status quo but a reminder that much of the world doesn’t accept the logic of mutually assured destruction. This sentiment was amplified this year when Nihon Hidankyo, Japan’s atomic and hydrogen bomb survivors group, won the Nobel peace prize for efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.
Eight decades after its first test, the nuclear bomb remains – its purpose long obsolete, its danger ever present. Built to defeat Hitler, dropped to end Japan’s imperial ambitions and multiplied to outlast the cold war, nuclear weapons have outlived every rationale for their existence. Arsenals have shrunk, but not enough. The world’s stockpile remains dangerously large, and efforts to reduce it further appear stalled. This against a geopolitical backdrop of nuclear proliferation, a multipolar and ideologically diverse UN, and the American desire for global pre-eminence. Little wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight – the closest ever to apocalypse.
A shared responsibility
In 2019, Gorbachev warned, with good reason, that nuclear deterrence keeps the world “in constant jeopardy”. It is obvious that as long as these weapons exist, the risk of nuclear war cannot be erased. The question is no longer why the bomb remains, but whether humanity can survive it for another 80 years.
This December, UN members voted 144-3 to establish an independent scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war. Shamefully, Britain was among the naysayers. Imagination has already outpaced fact. In her book Nuclear War, Annie Jacobson describes how humanity could end in 72 minutes after a North Korean “ bolt from the blue ” attack sparks a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia. She writes of thousands of warheads raining down on America, Europe, Russia and parts of Asia, obliterating cities, incinerating human life and leaving billions stripped of life, light and hope. Streets turn molten, winds flatten the land and those who endure suffer wounds so terrible that they no longer look – or act – human.
Ms Jacobson’s point is that this apocalyptic vision is the logical conclusion of the world’s current nuclear doctrines. Those that do emerge into the desolation discover what the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev warned decades ago: “ The survivors will envy the dead.” The devastation is total, offering a future that no one could bear to live through.
Amid historic lows in US-Russian relations, one truth remains: a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Leaders in Moscow and Washington should reaffirm this in the run-up to negotiating significant arsenal reductions as well as real limits on strategic missile defences. Such a statement, simple but profound, would remind the world that Mr Trump and Mr Putin recognise their shared responsibility to prevent global catastrophe. This will not be easy: rising nationalism, geopolitical rivalry and mutual mistrust between the countries – especially over Ukraine – loom large over disarmament efforts. But try they must. However bitter their disagreements, Washington and Moscow owe it to humanity to talk about – and act on – avoiding the unthinkable.
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Dec. 31
The Boston Globe on skilled worker visas
MAGA hardliners may be apoplectic, but President-elect Donald Trump got it spot on when he embraced the kind of visa program used to bring highly skilled technology workers to this country — an article of faith for the “tech bros” who supported Trump during his campaign.
Trump has throughout his years in government been firmly on both sides of the skilled immigration issue as represented by his stand on H-1B visas — the type that allow companies to bring skilled technical workers, including engineers, to this country for six-year stints. In fact, the type of visa once held by billionaire Elon Musk, a South African émigré, who became a US citizen in 2002.
Expanding the program, which is currently capped at a piddling 85,000 (65,000 plus another 20,000 reserved for those who graduate from US universities with a master’s degree or higher), is critical to the kind of economic growth and competitiveness that Trump supported all through his campaign. But for populists among his supporters — the ones who see every job that goes to someone not born on these shores as a loss — there is no middle ground. There is only “them” vs. “us.”
The current brouhaha over the visas began during Christmas week when MAGA activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump’s choice of tech entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan, who was born in India, to be a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, because of his previous stance on immigration. Then she drifted into a racist rant on X that included this gem: “You know, it was white Europeans who created the American Dream, and we didn’t create it so that it could be exploited by pro open border techies.”
Never shy about expressing his own views, Musk shot back on the social media site he bought in 2022 for $44 billion, “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”
And then he went off in a more obscene direction.
That spurred Trump adviser Stephen Bannon to fire back, saying of Musk, “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’ — need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.”
Trump, who temporarily froze H-1B visas during his first administration in a misguided effort to stem pandemic-related job losses, attempted to put an end to the internecine warfare, telling the New York Post Saturday, “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
Well, in fact, Trump may have confused the program that brings tech workers into the country with the H-2B program, used to bring unskilled workers in as gardeners or housekeepers, and the H-2A program for agricultural workers. In fact, the Trump Organization properties make widespread use of both of those programs.
And frankly there’s nothing wrong with that either.
Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Musk’s Tesla lead the pack in acquiring thousands of visas for their companies, according to a report by the National Foundation for American Policy. The foundation estimates that at least 300,000 potential employees were blocked from obtaining the visas by the cap. It’s also a system that rewards those companies that know how to work it and that have the resources to deal with the inevitable government red tape.
If Musk and his codirector on Trump’s effort to cut government waste, Vivek Ramaswamy, do nothing beyond convincing the incoming administration to cut that red tape, reach out beyond this nation’s borders, and invite in those with the talent and the drive to help build this nation, they will have done a great service.
There is also nothing contradictory about supporting a well-organized visa program that helps deliver the workforce America needs and still provides the secure border which Trump has also promised to deliver — Loomer’s ugly rantings notwithstanding.
Giving the United States access to the world’s best and brightest — who have throughout history contributed to its wealth and its culture — is essential to its future. Trump, by listening to those who know and operate in the real world, can help assure that future.
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/31/opinion/trump-immigration-h1b-visa-musk-loomer/
The Associated Press
