The Deep Constitutional Thought Of Preet Bharara

Back in March, when President Trump finally fired Preet Bharara from the job of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, I took the occasion to write a post titled "Good Riddance To Preet Bharara."  The post outlined some of Bharara's worst abuses as U.S. Attorney -- from the non-insider insider trading jihad (ultimately ended when the Second Circuit ruled that much of the underlying conduct was not a crime), to the shakedown of J.P. Morgan for $2 billion for failing to uncover the fraud of Bernie Madoff, to the politicized prosecution of Dean Skelos, to the blatantly illegal gag order in the Reason Magazine subpoena.  

You would think this guy would just go away quietly.  But on Sunday he re-emerged on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopolous.  This time he was spouting his theories about how our federal government should work under the Constitution.  Here is the transcript.  There are also articles reporting on the event in the New York Times here, and the New York Post here.   

First, I'll give you the gist of Mr. Bharara's Deep Constitutional Thoughts:  The U.S. Attorneys and the FBI get to decide who is going to be prosecuted and for what, and the President damned well better not meddle in something that is none of his business.  And if the President does have the temerity to try to meddle, even a little, the U.S. Attorneys and FBI can and should turn on him and investigate him and prosecute him for obstruction of justice.

The New York Times puts it this way:  

Mr. Bharara said the contacts with Mr. Trump made him increasingly uncomfortable because they broke with longstanding Justice Department rules on communicating with the White House.

Got that?  The Justice Department and prosecutors, on their own authority and without the consent of the President, can make "rules" that say, in effect, we don't report to the President and we don't take orders from the President, and we'll prosecute whomever we damn well please, and we don't even have to talk to the President if we don't feel like it.  We, the hoity toity unelected bureaucrats, are entitled to tell the duly elected President -- holder of all of the executive power of the U.S. government under a crystal-clear provision of the Constitution -- to get lost.  Oh, and then to prosecute him for attempting to exercise his constitutional function.  Indeed, that's just how Mr. Bharara thought he was entitled to behave:

The final contact occurred March 9, a day before Mr. Bharara was among 46  asked to resign.  Mr. Trump was then president, so Mr. Bharara said he declined to return the call and reported it to the chief of staff of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

Here is a somewhat longer quote of Mr. Bharara's own words:

[Y]ou have uncontroverted from someone who was under oath that on at least one occasion, the president of the United States cleared a room of his vice president and his attorney general, and told his director of the FBI that he should essentially drop a case against his former national security adviser.

And whether or not that is impeachable or that's indictable, that's a very serious thing. . . . And there's a lot to be frightened about and a lot to be outraged about if you have a president who, A, may have done it, although I know he denies it, but he hasn't done it under oath yet. And, B, he seems to suggest that even if he had done it or said words to that effect, there's nothing wrong with that. . . .  

That's an incredibly serious thing if people think that the president of the United States can tell heads of law enforcement agencies, based on his own whim or his own personal preferences or friendships, that they should or should not pursue particular criminal cases against individuals.

That's not how America works.

Actually, it is how America works.  Has this guy even heard of the Constitution?  Does he know that the President is the sole constitutional executive officer of the United States and that all of the subordinate executive branch personnel -- including the Attorney General, all the prosecutors, the FBI, and the whole rest of the Justice Department -- work for the President?  Bharara was the most powerful of all U.S. Attorneys in the country for some seven and a half years, and claimed the authority under the Constitution to put hundreds of people in jail, and yet he seems to have absolutely no idea that the prosecutorial discretion function of the government belongs to the President and not to the director of the FBI or anybody else.  The combination of ignorance and arrogance is breathtaking.

I particularly like that business where Bharara is outraged at the President thinking he can tell the prosecutors what cases to pursue "based on his own whim or his own personal preferences or friendships."  And how exactly do you think U.S. Attorneys exercise the prosecutorial discretion function?  How did Preet Bharara do it?  Is he telling us that his "whim" or "personal preferences" or "friendships" had nothing to do with it?  Balderdash!  And why exactly does he think that his own "personal preferences" take precedence over those of the guy who was elected to the office of President?  Rank idiocy.

Here is my proposal for President Trump:  See if Alan Dershowitz is available to give a one hour long mandatory lecture on basic constitutional law to all lawyers in the Justice Department.  If Dershowitz is not available, I am, and I'd be happy to do it.  At the end of the lecture, give a short quiz to the participants.  The quiz could include a few simple questions like these:

• In which government official does the Constitution "vest" "the executive Power" of the United States?
• Does the President of the United States have the authority under the Constitution to exercise the prosecutorial function of the executive branch of the government?
• Do the Attorney General and the FBI Director work for the President?
• Can the President fire the Attorney General or the FBI Director at any time for any or no reason?
• Can the President, if he wants, personally exercise the prosecutorial discretion function of the U.S. government?

Anybody who gets any of these simple questions wrong promptly gets fired for cause due to basic incompetence.  That will be a good start on draining the swamp!

Peonies!

One of Mrs. Manhattan Contrarian's favorite things is her flower garden in the country.  The annual highlight is the peonies, which bloom for about two to three weeks in mid-June.  Here are two pictures of them from this morning:

If you look closely, you can see that many of them are still not fully opened.  They will be with us for close to two more weeks.  

Corruption In The Eye Of The Beholder

An awful lot of people you might have once thought were sane have worked themselves into a lather the last few days over the testimony of Jim Comey supposedly revealing "obstruction of justice" by President Trump.  Hey, that's a crime!  On to impeachment!

There are probably a hundred or more instances of this out there, but I'll focus on the Washington Post and New York Times, since they seem to be the authoritative origin of the official talking points for the progressive media and blogosphere.  In the Post it's "Comey lays out the case that Trump obstructed justice."  

A Senate committee on Thursday heard former FBI director James B. Comey essentially lay out an obstruction of justice case against President Trump as he highlighted critical encounters that will be part of any evaluation of whether Trump committed a crime.  There was evidence of possible intent: when the president cleared the room so he could ask Comey — without the attorney general or his son-in-law present — about the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials after the 2016 election.   There was the suggestion of quid pro quo: when Trump repeatedly raised the status of Comey’s job as he asked for loyalty.  And there was the consequence: when Comey, having not steered investigators away from Flynn, was fired by Trump in May, long before the end of his 10-year term.

Or consider, from the New York Times, "Trump, Comey, and Obstruction of Justice: A Primer."

The testimony by the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey that President Trump, before firing him last month, demanded loyalty, urged him to drop the investigation into his former national security adviser and pressed him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia inquiry is fueling accusations that the president obstructed justice.

Would you think that, before they would plaster this kind of thing all over their front pages and lead editorials, our seemingly authoritative media would have at least a teensy clue what they were talking about?  Don't bet on it.  The Post, Times, et al., seem to be completely unaware that under our Constitution (Article II, Section 1), the "executive Power" is "vested" in the "President of the United States of America" -- and in nobody else.  The "executive Power" includes the power to prosecute for all crimes, and also includes the function of prosecutorial discretion.  The Attorney General and FBI Director hold none of this power on their own, but only by delegation from the President.  The President has the absolute right and authority to direct them to use the prosecutorial powers as he sees fit.  He has the clear constitutional authority to direct that any prosecution be ended, or to pardon the target, or to fire any and all of the prosecutors.  So how could any of that possibly be "obstruction of justice"?  

There is literally only one person on the left side of the political divide -- law professor Alan Dershowitz -- who seems capable of uttering these simple truisms and of trying to keep his fellow travelers from making utter fools of themselves.  Dershowitz published an op ed in the Washington Examiner on Thursday stating some of the obvious:

The president can, as a matter of constitutional law, direct the attorney general, and his subordinate, the director of the FBI, tell them what to do, whom to prosecute and whom not to prosecute. Indeed, the president has the constitutional authority to stop the investigation of any person by simply pardoning that person. . . .  The Comey statement suggests that one reason Trump fired him was because of his refusal or failure to publicly announce that the FBI was not investigating Trump personally. Trump "repeatedly" told Comey to "get that fact out," and he did not.  If that is true, it is certainly not an obstruction of justice.

All I can say is, there sure seem to be an awful lot of people with a gigantic level of outrage over conduct that couldn't possibly more clearly legal and authorized and constitutional.  

And now, can we talk about some conduct of the government that is (or was) equally clearly illegal and unauthorized and unconstitutional?  I'm talking about the practice of the prior administration of shaking down banks and industrial companies for multi-billion dollar settlements and then passing out the loot to political friends and supporters of the administration, to be used for the political advantage of the Democratic Party and its allies, including voter registration and voter outreach efforts.  The Wall Street Journal had a good roundup of the bank side of the scam back in August 2016, headline "Look Who's Getting That Bank Settlement Cash."  

Imagine if the president of the United States forced America’s biggest banks to funnel hundreds of millions—and potentially billions—of dollars to the corporations and lobbyists who supported his agenda, all while calling it “Main Street Relief.” The public outcry would rightly be deafening. Yet the Obama administration has used a similar strategy to enrich its political allies, advance leftist pet projects, and protect its legacy—and hardly anyone has noticed.  The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. . . . 

Combined, the [settling] banks [including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America] must divert well over $11 billion into “consumer relief,” which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. . . .   [A] substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list. Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but.  This is a handout to the administration’s allies. Many of these groups engage in voter registration, community organizing and lobbying on liberal policy priorities at every level of government.

None of the handouts to the prior administration's political supporters was made the subject of an appropriation by Congress.  They took the billions of dollars of settlement money, put it in a slush fund, and passed it out to their friends as they saw fit for political advantage.  Is it possible to imagine a clearer case of extreme corruption?

And does the Constitution have anything to say about this?  That would be Article I, Section 9:  "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law. . . ."  

Well, now new Attorney General Jeff Sessions is putting an end to this practice.  From the front page of today's New York Times, "Settlements for Company Sins Can No Longer Aid Other Projects, Sessions Says."    

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a memo issued this week, directed the Justice Department to no longer include funding for projects managed by outside groups in settlements with corporate wrongdoers. The settlement money will instead go exclusively to the federal Treasury or to victims of the company’s actions, Mr. Sessions said.

Do you expect there to be a little outrage here about money belonging to the taxpayers being passed out to left-wing interest groups for political purposes, in the face of a specific constitutional prohibition?  Hey, this is Pravda.  They go and seek out reactions from a few environmental lawyers:

“You’re killing something that’s worked really well — which is getting violators who’ve broken the law, in some cases in a criminal way, to agree to fund projects to make the air or water cleaner,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and the former director of civil enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency. “What’s wrong with that?” . . .  Frank Holleman, a senior lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that if settlement money for environmental violations goes to the Treasury Department, it may be spent on something else, and prevent restoration of or protection of an affected community or ecosystem.

Don't try to look for any kind of unifying constitutional theory in the positions being taken here.  It's only about momentary advantage in the political fray.  We get the money!  You go to jail!  Constitution?  What's that?

UPDATE, June 11:  RealClearPolitics links this morning to a particularly unhinged example of a constitutional ignoramus, Fred Kaplan of Slate.  The article is headlined "What Trump Doesn’t Know Will Hurt Us: The GOP excuse about Trump’s ignorance will lead America to disaster."

House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to excuse the most incriminating portions of Comey’s statement—the highly detailed claims that Trump pressured him to swear loyalty, to drop the probe of Michael Flynn, and to tell the public that Trump himself was not under criminal investigation—by saying that the president is “just new to this.” In other words, Ryan was saying, Trump isn’t a crook; he’s just ignorant. . . .  So these are the GOP’s rationales for Trump’s behavior: He was only talking like a felon, he didn’t necessarily commit a crime; and if he did, it’s only because he didn’t know what he was doing.

Fred, I highly recommend that you not take your constitutional law from the political writers at the Washington Post and New York Times.  You might try reading the document itself, which is not long.  The relevant provision is only one sentence of 15 words.

Believe Me, You Don't Have To Worry About China Seizing "Climate Leadership"

My last post on this subject was dated April 1, but it was not an April Fool's joke -- at least not on my part.  The New York Times had just reported (on March 29) that China was "poised" to seize the "climate leadership" from the United States should the U.S. make the horrific error of exiting from the Paris climate agreement.  Pravda quoted the Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper chastising the United States for preparing to exit Paris (“[The U.S.] is undermining the great cause of mankind trying to protect the earth, and the move is indeed irresponsible and very disappointing.”).  Meanwhile, of course Pravda failed to note that China already had about triple the coal-fired electricity-generation capacity of the U.S., had made no commitments under Paris to reduce the amount, and in fact had another 1.5 times total U.S. capacity either planned or under construction -- even as the U.S. has been reducing coal-fired electricity-generation capacity for years.  Great "climate leadership," China!

They just have to find something to try to frighten you, no matter how absurd it may be.  On Tuesday's front page, they're back on this "climate leadership" thing with a big article headlined "China Turns Economic Engine Toward Clean Energy Leadership."   The theme this time is that China now has this gigantic economic engine, and they are going to use the genius of their state-directed capital model to go all in for renewable energy, thereby crushing the foolish purist capitalist laggards like the U.S.  Scary!

Our fearless reporter (Keith Bradsher) takes us to Liulong, China, where China is building the "world's largest floating solar project."  It will provide "light and air conditioning" to "much of" a nearby city.  (Do they actually think that a solar project can provide "light" when it is needed -- at night?  If so, they don't offer any explanation in this article of how that might work.) 

The project reflects China’s effort to reshape the world order in renewable energy as the United States retreats. Such technological expertise will form the infrastructure backbone needed for countries to meet their climate goals, making China the energy partner of choice for many nations. . . .  China has already started an expensive campaign at home and abroad to solidify its considerable hold on solar, wind and other energy-saving businesses. If successful, China would win the economic and diplomatic spoils that the United States and some European countries have long enjoyed from dominating businesses like software, computer chips and airplanes.

Better get on board with the brave new world, United States, before China passes you by and leaves you in the dust!

Are you worrying about China cornering all those "economic and diplomatic spoils" that are sure to come pouring forth from its dominance of the global wind and solar businesses?  Don't.  Here's all you need to know:  Private capital is not stupid.  State-directed capital is stupid.  Private capital only finances projects expected to repay the investment (plus something).  Thus wealth is created.  Private capital does not undertake wind or solar energy projects without massive government subsidies and tax credits.  That tells you that wind and solar energy projects destroy rather than create wealth.

State-directed (stupid) capital gets invested for lots of reasons other than making money.  For example, state-directed capital might finance a project in order to convey perceived recognition or prestige upon the leader who directs the money.  Or state-directed capital might be used in pursuit of economic fallacy.  Do you think that's not too likely?  You would be wrong.  The main such fallacy is that the project in question will "create jobs."  (Exhibit A:  So-called "infrastructure" spending.)  Both of these reasons apply in spades to China's renewable energy projects.  The praise and honors that China is winning from the world community for its Potemkin village climate charade illustrate the first reason.  As to the "creates jobs" fallacy, try this from the New York Times article:

The solar industry employs more than one million workers in everything from making panels for export to installing them domestically, though solar accounts for only 2 percent of its electricity needs. By contrast, China has four million coal miners to supply the power plants that generate 70 percent of the country’s electricity.   

In other words, solar projects only produce about one-ninth the energy per worker employed.  In the eyes of the New York Times -- and, apparently, of Chinese officials -- this is a good thing about solar energy.

And, about that supposedly gigantic "economic engine" that China has put together.  China's GDP is now reported as being up to over $11 trillion (per Trading Economics here) -- if you believe their numbers.  That would make their economy about 60% the size of the U.S. economy; but remember, they have about 4 times as many people.  So their per capita GDP is only about 15% that of the U.S.  That puts them down around number 80 on the world list of countries by per capita GDP, behind just about any country you have heard of (e.g., Argentina, Mexico, Dominican Republic) and some others you may not have heard of (e.g., Gabon, Botswana).  And again, that is if you believe their numbers.  

And there is a huge problem with their numbers.  They have vast overcapacity in the seeming "prestige" industries, the big stuff like steel, aluminum, coal (!), ghost cities and the like.  It's the old "heavy industry" fallacy that Stalin fell for and that ultimately brought down the Soviet Union.  In the U.S., when the steel industry finds itself with vast overcapacity, economic forces bring on a shake out, and the industry right sizes.  In China, state banks and state subsidies keep the wasteful production going indefinitely.  Government statisticians count it all like it's real and needed.  China's GDP numbers could easily be overstated by 30 or even 50%.  There's no way to tell.

So, guys, go ahead and knock yourselves out building up capacity to make solar panels and windmills.  Ten years from now, you'll just be further behind.

UPDATE, June 9:  In case you harbor any crazy thoughts that the Chinese know what they are doing in energy policy, check out this Wall Street Journal blog entry from back in February, headlined "China Generates Record Wind Power, Then Throws It Away."  As pointed out here many times, wind energy -- with its wild swings back and forth between full capacity and nothing -- is not so easy to integrate into a grid that need steady, reliable power.  So in China, they generate vast amounts of power from wind, and then can't use it, and throw it away.  For 2016:

Wind power generated in 2016 rose an impressive 30% to 241 billion kilowatt-hours, according to figures reported Tuesday. But the amount of unused wind power rose much faster. Wastage rose nearly 50% to 50 billion-kilowatt hours: about as much as Greece or Bulgaria use in total electricity each year.

Blue States On The Path To Economic Suicide

Who says that political polarization is a bad thing -- at least in a federal republic like ours?  In the old days of much less political polarization -- say 10 or 20 or 30 years ago -- there was more bipartisan governance out in the states than there is today.  The Dems would regularly control one or both legislative chambers and/or the governorship in Republican-leaning states, and vice versa.  That does still occur (for example, Illinois and Massachusetts have Republican governors), but it diminishes with every passing year.

In the federal arena, government closely divided between people of highly polarized political visions leads to ever-escalating anger and to gridlock, as we all can see on a daily basis.  Out among the states, it means something very different:  red states increasingly come under the full control of ideological Republicans, while blue states increasingly come under the control of highly ideological Democrats.  Each group then has the opportunity to enact a more pure version of its side's governing vision.  On the Republican side (at least in the economic policy sphere), that means keeping government spending and taxes relatively low.  For example, Florida, with a population now larger than that of New York, has a state budget only about 60% as large.

But for today, let's focus on what is going on over on the blue state side of the divide.  As the progressive wing of the Democratic Party gains power, there is less and less resistance to the imperative to solve all of the people's problems right now with a big blowout of spending and coercion.  Does anybody here recognize that resources are not infinite?  If anybody does, they just get shouted down.  Let's consider a few examples of recent developments:

• Single payer health care.  As I reported here just two weeks ago, four states (Vermont, Colorado, New York and California) have had so-called "single payer" (fully socialized) health care proposals advance far enough in their state law-making process to have fairly concrete cost numbers attached to them.  In all of the four cases, the incremental costs of the new program -- above and beyond all existing state government health care expenditures including things like Medicaid -- came in at more than the revenue raised from all existing state taxes.  So, enacting the program would have required more than doubling of existing state taxes.  

Do you think that the quantification of the enormous costs of moving to a single payer system would lead the progressive movement to back off, or maybe slow down, on efforts to enact the system?  According to the New York Times over the weekend, it's the opposite.  The headline of the big front-page article on Sunday is "The Single-Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left on Health Care."  Excerpt:

[A]s Democrats regroup from their 2016 defeat, leaders say the party has plainly shifted well to the left on the issue, setting the stage for a larger battle over the health care system in next year’s congressional elections and the 2020 presidential race. Their liberal base, emboldened by Senator Bernie Sanders’s forceful advocacy of government-backed health care last year, is increasingly unsatisfied with the Affordable Care Act and is demanding more drastic changes to the private health insurance system. . . .  Party strategists say they expect that the 2020 presidential nominee will embrace a broader version of public health coverage than any Democratic standard-bearer has in decades.

The article notes that in polls some 60% of Americans respond that they support some form of "universal" health care.  It does not mention that when Coloradans became aware of the costs, a single payer proposal that previously seemed to be leading suddenly lost in a referendum by an astounding margin of about 80-20.  But isn't there infinite free government money?  In California they think there is, and the "single payer" proposal out there continues to advance.

Hey, California, go ahead and give it a try!  Your citizens are so rich that nobody will even notice when the 13% top marginal income tax rate goes to 26%!

• Paris Climate Agreement.  With President Trump's announcement that he is exiting the Paris climate agreement, it's dead, right?  Not so fast!  Last Thursday, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington put out an announcement that he is joining with the governors of New York and California to form something called the United States Climate Alliance to harness efforts at the state level to combat "climate change."  It seems that these states think they can meet on their own the proposed 26-28% reduction in "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2025:

New York, California and Washington, representing over one-fifth of U.S. Gross Domestic Product, are committed to achieving the U.S. goal of reducing emissions 26-28 percent from 2005 levels and meeting or exceeding the targets of the federal Clean Power Plan.

Do they know that Germany has succeeded in getting electricity production from renewables all the way up to 30% of the total -- but in the process they have also succeeded in roughly tripling residential electricity rates?  When asked about its progress on energy transition to renewables, Germany likes to point out that its greenhouse gas emissions are down some 40% since 1990 -- conveniently omitting that almost all of this reduction represents gains from closing down the inefficient East German industrial sector in the 90s.  In recent years, Germany has hit a wall in reducing GHG emissions.  Here is a chart of its year-by-year emissions changes 1990 to 2016:

Looks like they haven't gained any net ground at all since 2010.  So, Washington, California and New York, how do you plan to avoid Germany's "renewable energy paradox":  covering the countryside with windmills, and then watching electricity bills triple while GHG emissions stay steady or decline hardly at all?  Believe me, Inslee, Cuomo and Brown don't have a clue about what technology is supposedly going to make this happen.  They will just order it to happen, and of course it will then happen!  Good luck, guys!  And don't worry -- tripling the electricity bills will not at all affect the capacity of the people to pay for, as an example, single payer health care.  After all, taxpayer money is infinite.

• Government employee pensions.   If you are a blue state, you believe that government employee unions are a good thing.  And the number one priority of government employee unions is generous defined benefit pensions.  The problem of massive underfunding of government employee pensions is very largely, although not quite entirely, a problem of the blue states.

My favorite measure of the employee pension underfunding issue is dollars of underfunding per household in the state.  Here is a state-by-state chart from ZeroHedge as of December 2016:

Not meaning to excuse red Alaska, but they are a very small state and a special case.  After them, it's a who's who of deep blue:  California, Illinois, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon.  At some $92,000 per household, California all by itself is well over $1 trillion in the hole.  The ZeroHedge article at the link points out that CalPers has been under pressure to lower its interest rate assumption from 7.5% to 6% -- which would have the effect of raising that $92,000 to more like $150,000 per household, and the $1+ trillion to well over $1.5 trillion.  No problem, California.  Might as well go for single payer health care while you are at it.

The process of economic self-destruction is not a fast one.  It took Venezuela 19 years from the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 to get where it is today.  None of the blue states is engaged in anything nearly so extreme as the Venezuela program.  On the other hand, Connecticut has definitely hit a wall of declining population and declining tax revenue.  See Friday's Wall Street Journal editorial here (behind pay wall).  California has great weather and many great industries.  But if they try hard enough, they can definitely set their economy into decline.  Lots more states are lined up to follow.  

Paris: Donald Trump Demonstrates That He Has The Basic Competence To Be President

Among my New York friends, one of the most frequent criticisms that I hear of Donald Trump is that he just doesn't have the basic competence to be President.  He is ignorant of fundamental issues of public policy; he arrogantly thinks he knows everything, while in fact he knows little or nothing; his attention span is about 6 seconds, and he refuses to learn.  I mean, how can such a person possibly carry out in an appropriate way the awesome responsibilities of the presidency?

For myself, I've been withholding judgment.  After all, a President doesn't really need to know all that much.  He has endless expert advisors, indeed far more advisors than any human being could have time to listen to.  Far and away the most important thing he needs to do is avoid making major blunders that can do great harm to the American economy and the American people.

In the decision regarding the Paris climate accord, Donald Trump has just been tested on this fundamental criterion of basic competence, and has passed.  Barack Obama was tested on the same criterion, and totally failed.

It is impossible to look at the Paris climate accord with any degree of scrutiny and conclude that a remotely competent American president could have anything to do with it.  This conclusion applies irrespective of whatever you might think about whether "greenhouse gas" emissions are causing a problem or even a crisis for world climate.  Even if you think that the climatic effect of human GHG emissions is an existential crisis facing the planet, it would still be completely incompetent for an American president to sign on to this particular agreement.  

This conclusion follows from the most basic cost/benefit analysis.  The Paris accord imposes huge and uncapped costs on the American people and economy, for little to no climate benefit -- and that is even if you completely accept the U.N.'s phony climate models that have been ginned up without empirical verification to scare the bejeezus out of you.  Just look at the structure of the Paris accord.  The United States commits to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 -- only 8 years away.  China, with 1.3 billion people and emissions already about double those of the U.S., agrees to no reductions whatsoever, and only to try to reach "peak" emissions by 2030 -- by which time its emissions could be 50% or even 100% higher than today.  India, with well over 1 billion people -- a good half of whom don't yet have electricity and somehow think they are entitled to get it -- commits to nothing whatsoever.  Africa, with another about 1 billion people, very few of whom currently have electricity, commits to nothing whatsoever.  In my view these billions of people are entitled to electricity and transportation and heat and cooling just like we have, and they are going to get those things by use of the cheapest and most reliable energy available, namely fossil fuels.  But even if you believe that all the Africans and Indians and Chinese must be kept in perpetual poverty in order to avoid a hypothetical degree or two of atmospheric warming, the Paris agreement does not contain any commitment by them to go along with that.

And how about that 26-28% emissions reduction by the U.S. by 2025?  According to this EPA report, U.S. GHG emissions have already decreased about 7% from the 2005 benchmark (largely due to the fracking revolution and increased use of natural gas versus coal).  But the next 20% will not come nearly so easily.  The main proposal of the prior administration and of environmentalists to achieve that next 20% was the EPA's Clean Power Plan -- that is, shutter cheap coal power plants, and cover the landscape with wind and solar farms.  A version of that same strategy has led Germany to residential electricity prices about triple the U.S. average, and even so they seem to have hit a ceiling at getting about 30% of their power from wind and solar.  To get any higher they now need some combination of even more redundant fossil fuel back up generation plus some kind of massive storage capacity, the technology for which doesn't even exist.  Or, maybe the U.S. could revert to Obama's previous plan of a cap-and-trade system, otherwise known as intentionally driving up the cost of electricity and gasoline -- making their price "skyrocket," in Obama's immortal locution -- until the people can't afford them anymore.

Trump had his people make some estimates of what would happen to selected industries if the U.S. followed one of these intentional-energy-poverty scenarios.  Here's what they came up with (as of 2040, as reported by James Delingpole at Breitbart):

Paper down 12 percent.  Cement down 23 percent.  Iron and steel down 38 per cent.  Coal down 86 percent.

OK, maybe they are exaggerating.  But they are clearly not entirely wrong, because the whole idea of the program of fossil fuel restriction is to force down the use of fossil fuels, which inherently means that the heaviest users of the fossil fuels will be driven out of business.  

Now perhaps you believe the warnings of the climate alarm movement, and you think that all of this is necessary to avert all-but-certain climate catastrophe.  The problem is that the Paris accord will not avert the climate catastrophe, or even change anything measurably -- even if you accept the alarmist models at face value.  If you take the U.N.'s models of the relationship between GHGs and temperature, and factor in full implementation of the Paris accords, including all U.S. and European GHG reductions but also increases from the third world, you find reductions in projected temperature increases out to the year 2100 that are so small as to be at the very margin of measurability.  The following chart illustrating the point is from Bjorn Lomborg, via WattsUpWithThat:

In other words, President Barack Obama signed up for the intentional energy impoverishment of the American people on a massive scale to achieve absolutely nothing with respect to the climate.  It is hard to think of anything more incompetent.  With a principal job of avoiding major costly blunders for the American people and the American economy, Obama committed an obvious error likely of multi-trillion dollar magnitude.  Trump has identified the issue and has reversed the error.  This is just simple, basic competence.

While we are talking about competence, let us also examine the reaction of the titans of American business to President Trump's announcement.  The Washington Post has a roundup, headlined "'Climate change is real': CEOs share their disappointment over Trump's Paris accord exit."  

In response [to President Trump's announcement], one corporate titan after another tweeted their disappointment at the announcement, companies issued statements committing to action on climate change and two high-profile members of Trump's business advisory council said they would leave the forum in response.

Yeah, well who?  The Post's Exhibit A is Elon Musk:

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday afternoon that he was "departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world."  

Hey, Post -- is Musk the head of any other company?  Hint: that would be SolarCity, a manufacturer and installer of solar panels that is on the brink of financial disaster and totally dependent on government "renewable energy" handouts and tax credits to survive.  Trump's new policies could likely spell the end of SolarCity, and could even take Tesla down along with it (the two Musk-controlled entities merged a few months ago).  Funny, isn't it, that the Post wouldn't mention that?

Let's move on to the Post's Exhibit B.  That would be Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric:

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, who had said during a speech to students at Georgetown University in May that the business community "has kind of moved on in this debate," tweeted a similar refrain, calling upon business to lead the way on global climate standards. "Disappointed with today’s decision on the Paris Agreement," he wrote in a tweet. "Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government."   

So, Post, might GE have any interest in multi-billion dollar government giveaways for wind and solar energy?  Nothing that you can find in this article.  If you are interested, try here as to wind, and here as to solar.  GE is in up to its neck in government subsidy farming.

Keep going through the Post's list of CEOs, and you'll find it's a combination of subsidy farmers like Musk and Immelt, and others who think that their businesses are immune to intentional energy-impoverishment policies (e.g., Tim Cook of Apple).  Could Tim Cook take ten minutes to evaluate the actual Paris accord critically to see if is actually a remotely reasonable deal for the United States?  I guess not.  He's too busy running Apple!  And is there anything in the Post of the reaction of people in businesses like -- to take a few random examples -- paper, cement, iron and steel, or coal?  Of course not.  Those people are expendable!