The Return of Big Brother

There's An App for That

The past week of coronavirus news has more than once left me staring, mouth-open at the television or re-reading something in news multiple times just to make sure I read it correctly. It's not the mounting casualty numbers. It's not Trump's daily efforts to one-up the previous day's buffoonery.

A Message from The Ministry of Truth:
Stay Home and Get the App

Instead it's the speed with which technology is being heralded as the solution to all of our SARS-CoV-2 problems. It seems there will an app for this too!!! There's just one catch... that app may soon be sharing information directly with authorities.

We've known for a long time that our phones have been "spying" on us. Indeed, our phones are doing things most of us would rather not know about. As we live more and more of our personal and professional lives through our smart phones, we've become complacent about the data we willingly share. Sure, there are these ubiquitous "terms of use" certificates we instinctively click without reading. If we actually read them, the proper reaction ought to be to throw the phone in the river. But, since a lot of the data being mined about our habits is designed to sell us more stuff we don't need, we just roll with it.

David, Goliath and SARS-CoV-2

The fight to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 around the globe has been an evolving struggle, too frequently pitting governments against each other as they fight to secure resources or impose measures to limit the spread.

Not Quite as it Appears

This is not so say there's no coordination or information sharing going; indeed, the WHO is collecting and disseminating lots of data, central bankers have been communicating with each other about interventions in their respective domestic economies, and ideas for fiscal stimulus are being mimicked by numerous national legislatures. Yet, disappointingly, there have also been too many instances of  "every-man-for-himself" in the response to what is an inherently transnational phenomenon.

More broadly, the instances of "coordination" or "every-man-for-himself" are revealing of aspects of the asymmetrical distribution of power in the international system and, for the purposes of this post, Canada-U.S. relations in particular.

SARS-CoV-2 Isolation Diaries

Like just about everyone else on the planet, I've been at home with my thoughts a lot lately. I've had a lot of them. The problem is that so has everyone else. Indeed, there's been an outbreak of written opinion nearly as large as the outbreak of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, itself. And, also similar to the SARS-CoV-2, I don't care for a lot of it. 

Dusting Off the Old Plans?

This blog post is going to be mostly a litany of complaints, things that have more than once caused me to get my dander up as I've watched them unfold. I'll refrain from straying into domains properly dominated by my natural science colleagues. However, my most basic observation of what's transpired reaffirms the need for the natural and social sciences to at least get together for coffee now and then.

The litany that follows here eventually leads me to a more serious set of points I think I have something to say about as we contemplate life during and after this pandemic. 

Black Swans and Presidential Campaigns

Whoa! Where do I begin? The coronavirus has upended everything. Just a month ago, I predicted Donald Trump would ride a booming U.S. economy to reelection. I suppose that is something of a caveat that I can now take to argue for exactly the opposite.

Dealing with an Imperial Colossus

I think Donald Trump is going to be re-elected in November. It was a conclusion I reached as I sat on my couch last Monday night, fruitlessly waiting for returns from the Iowa Democratic Caucuses. As I write this more than a week later, we still don't know what the final tally was. The stakes were enormous, and Iowa Democrats managed to screw it up, handing Trump, and all those who suck up to him, a series of talking points to challenge the validity of the entire electoral process-- anyone remember "system is rigged against us"? Expect to hear that a lot this fall.

Iowa was an epic, inexcusable debacle.

The Incumbency Economy

As many others have noted, Iowa was not the only political victory for Donald Trump. The U.S. economy added 225,000 jobs in January. The country's unemployment rate is at a ridiculously low 3.6%. Moreover, Trump's abject ignorance around policy-making, including ill-advised unilateralism on trade, are not having the catastrophic impact on economic growth many predicted. Trump understandably took at victory lap on the economy in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night.

Dispute Settlement and the USMCA

Some of you are undoubtedly basking in warm fuzzy feelings from holiday time spent with friends and family. Others of you are probably just glad to be home, happy to have survived a week or two with family, perhaps wishing you'd had better dispute resolution tools at your disposal.

via GIPHY

USMCA: Curb Your Enthusiasm

The drumbeat of bizarre political juxtapositions just keeps rolling over us. Yesterday was no exception. First, the House Democrats released its two Article of Impeachment against President Trump focused on "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress." An hour later, many of those same Democrats were before the podium announcing they had worked out a deal with the White House to move forward on one of President Trump's signature trade initiatives, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or to some, NAFTA2.0).

I suppose the fact that many of us remain flabbergasted (alarmed?) by the daily barrage of these juxtapositions could be read as a source of comfort, cold comfort? Although the impeachment saga routinely sucks most of the oxygen out of the headlines, the USMCA briefly held center-stage. I was struck the generally positive headlines about the bargain struck between House Democrats and the White House were. A rare instance of cooperation between Trump and House Democrats? A sign of some sort of return to a bipartisan consensus on the merits of trade? A template for 21st Century trade agreements?

Hardly. The best I can muster about the USMCA is that it could have been worse.

Authoritarianism

Madison, Hamilton, and Good Sleep

Another semester of teaching around here is winding down and yesterday afternoon was the last seminar. My department happens to have a number of senior seminars that are "variable topics" courses; the precise content may differ semester to semester depending on the instructor.  The course was Political Science 484, Topics in U.S. Politics and Policy. I've taught this particular section in the past, but decided last winter that I would try something different.

Ackowledgement I Wish I'd Written

It's been nearly a year since I made any sort of contribution to this space. The main culprit was a book project on the re-negotiated NAFTA. About this time last year, the negotiations came to a rapid conclusion. I had to step on the gas. I'm rather pleased with the outcome. I'm happy to have some of my musings about he NAFTA in a single location. It should be on the shelf sometime later in October. I quite like the cover.

A Trump-Inspired Holiday Reading List... Humbug!!!!

There's no other way to put it, 2018 sucked. I still put a lot of faith in what James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers about "ambition being made to counteract ambition" as an antidote to the "mischiefs of faction." Even if Trump's election in 2016 signalled the status quo was no longer acceptable (a judgement of voters I understood), I slept well at night knowing the the famous "checks and balances" and the "separation of powers" would limit any of the worst impulses of an inexperienced, incompetent narcissist such as we have.

Some Election Day Non-predictions

Today is U.S. midterm election day. I've been doing a lot more thinking about U.S. politics of late than writing about it, in part because it's become such a depressing, rapidly changing dumpster fire. Rather than a bunch of predictions about the outcome, or an effort at scenario forecasting, I simply wanted to get a few things on paper that I'll be focusing on starting Wednesday November 7

Time to Vote

1) The States, in particular, who controls governors' mansions and the state legislatures. If the Democrats can show some signs of life in places they've neglected while the GOP has placed a strangle-hold, the makings of significant change could be on the horizon.

2) The 2020 Presidential Campaign begins Wednesday morning. The Democratic bench still seems worryingly thin, although there will likely be no shortage of entrants. Who, if anyone, will challenge Trump in the GOP primaries?
2a) Primary season may kick off with the first debates among candidates as early as the spring of 2019 (good grief).